After You Left, and: The Thousand Ways You've Wounded, and: Dreaming in Arabic

After You Left

Our dog smells the cloth you used to placebeneath our son as you nursed—she lies

down beside it, sighs, and gives methe old world look of dogs

as if she knows it will only bethe two of us, left to memory.

What it must be like to smell the pastand future, to smell grief and lie down in it.

The Thousand Ways You've Wounded

Think of the fracture in a home's foundation.The crack that shifts and splits roof, lets in

rain and rot and root. Think of the smoke screenconcealing a pine forest conflagration—

fallen trunks cloaked in ash and ember.Think of the scorched earth of every row

all the way from root to road to horizon. Think of the sky and the heartand their many chambers:

all full of holes, all drainedof moisture—chambers emptiedof life leading to life elsewhere.

Think of the thousand ways you've wounded.Think of tilled earth and every fracture.

Think of what is left behind:every earth hurt, every wind violation—

no blade of grass that does not grieve you,no patch of earth that does not know you.

Dreaming in Arabic

Do you remember what it was like to dream in Arabic?Conversations and memories told and retold in Arabic?

The muezzin calls from a distant neighborhood as your fatherfinishes tea with friends, laughing at a joke told only in Arabic.

The screech of chalk in your mind when you rehearseyour oustaz's lessons, learned your khurufs in Arabic.

You remember the word akhdar describes several shades: the colorof a tree's leaves and of its bark, colors limitless in Arabic.

The waking in and out of sleep to hear the beggar boyson the street chanting their alms prayer in Arabic.

The opening of l'Equipe you brought from a plane—friends debate which team will win it all, all in Arabic.

Your friends visit you here in dreamspace, asking when will yoube back or can I come visit? questions that arrive in Arabic.

In the dream, you fill out your immigration card knowingresidence, nationality, destination, and the form is all in Arabic.

On days that you are awake, you try to remember the wordfor life or love or war, full of regret for losing your Arabic.Your name Haroun lingers with you in mind and messages,friends telling you of wives, children, of their lives in Arabic.