For Alma Moamen Mohammed Hamdan, Age 0

 

I think of grief, Alma, in rooms

Of grief. Quartered. Almost an eruption

Of disfigured freedom. There is air

To it, a calm to pierce. It is allowed. 


& then imagine myself

Bloodying my hands to overturn the rubble 

Separating us. Quick jagged wall. 

Your small bones. Eyes rheumy with plea. 


A parent strung to a child’s heart

Such that any distance, even those we

Can traverse, keens with near panic. 

To think of it: you there, flesh & tender


& then that sudden tomb, flotsam

& shattered architecture. You gone. 

A parent’s fingers over concrete, over

Glass, dust, rebar twisting like tree branch. 


Someone dug for you, Alma. Little

Soul, someone tried grief when a bomb

Dropped. Someone carved to find

You broken & they wept under whistle


Of bullet, animal rumble of plane. 

In all the wide world there was only

That grief & no space for it to root. 

I sing your name. Alma. Alma. Alma.  


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