to the sea

You who cannot hear or cannot know the terrible intricacies of our species, our minds, the extent to which we have done what we have done,& yet the depth to which we have loved what we have loved — the hillside at dawn, dark eyes outlined with the dark sentences of  kohl, the fūl we shared beneath the lime tree at the general’s house after visiting Goitom in prison for trying to leave the country (the first time), the apricot color of camels racing on the floor of  the world as the fires blazed in celebration of  Independence. How dare I move into the dark space of  your body carrying my dreams, without an invitation, my dreams wandering in ellipses, pet goats or chickens devouring your yard & shirts. Sea, my oblivious afterworld, grant us entry, please, when we knock, but do not keep us there, deliver our flowers & himbasha bread. Though we can’t imagine, now, what our dead might need, & above all can’t imagine it is over & that they are, in fact, askless, are needless, in fact, still hold somewhere the smell of coffee smoking in the house, please, the memory of joy fluttering like a curtain in an open window somewhere inside the brain’s secret luster where a woman, hands red with henna, beats the carpet clean with the stick of a broom & the children, in the distance, choose stones for the competition of stones,& the summer wears a crown of  beles in her green hair & the tigadelti’s white teeth & the beautiful bones of Massawa, the gaping eyes & mouths of its arches worn clean by the sea, your breath & your salt. Please, you, being water too, find a way into the air & then the river & the spring so that your waters can wash the elders, with the medicine of the dreaming of their children, cold & clean.