Ghazal

it is dark here & still you have al nur at your neck when fajr does not come

my body is the color of mourning / not dua or dawah / so I say let the day come

my body is fajr / day is mourning / I am still a clot of blood looking for skin

the color of god is a stain / shaped to you like a grief not yet come

black is the color of god not grief & rain is not looking for skin / but is red dust

stepping into your body without melting & finding every empty space a dwelling to come

I am still an accident of geography looking for a body that is not a stain & prayer

is the mourning I wake up to / the clot of blood I pick until again a wound comes

out the color of accident / which is red dust / the color of geography / which is dissolution

& lined like a palm made by prayer / shaped to me like a drought not yet come

& yes / I want to be named to the marrow / make inventory & god of what has yet hurt me

& so I pick dua from your neck until I am no longer wound & strained & come

to claim the dwelling of you a sign & beget a desert of new names & call fajr skin

that has left blood & black how I step into your body & melting the stain to come

it is mourning here / I am four droughts old again & mistake all the women

in my family to the time of desert / clot of blood & red clay straining / for a homecoming

but looking for skin does not unstitch the mouth & the stain of grief is finding

no words at all & every empty space is like stepping into red dust & what comes

from accident begets home / invented by all the god in my color & yes / I want

to be shaped to the clot / whole & make blood & black of what has yet come