loose strife [Say, when we woke those icy spring mornings]

Say, when we woke those icy spring mornings they were still there. The upper portion of their faces long ruined but you could still see the meaning in their hands, palms once covered in gold. We knew better than to call them by their names, Light that Shines Throughout the Universe and His consort, but there were stories of  travelers lost  in the foothills of  the Hindu  Kush and a distant brilliance that led them home. The way a candle physically enters your body after it has been snuffed out. The pearly smoke suffused in the air. In one school hundreds  of  miles  away  all  the   girls  my age  were  poisoned, and last week outside the capital a woman like my  sister was shot dead  in front of a crowd by two men who forced their bodies into her body and then judged her an infidel so they could kill her and be done with it.  After the  visitors were blasted I had a dream. I saw a human man standing by a lake and no one was looking at him directly. His image on the surface of the water cleaner than anything in this world. In   my   dream  the  man   said,  “Thousands   of  lifetimes  ago when my body was cut into pieces by an evil king, I was not caught up in the idea of the self.” Then  in  my   dream  someone   picked  up  a rock  and  I  woke  up. It took almost a month, the  great  heads  drilled with holes,  then anti-aircraft  tanks rolled in. Each hundred-foot niche now empty but each cavity left shaped like us, like a person. Before it happened we talked about it. Grandfather said don’t they have a share in heaven? Second Aunt said it was more realistic this way. God not in heaven but in exile.