For Salam Wael Ahmed Al-Astal, Age 0

 

Mine is a different tongue, hears

Constellation in your name, your

Family’s many bodies in sudden

Tableau against an inkblot sky. 

To the stars, I hear, trying to

Eulogize through linguistic theft. 

& what are your many names,

Lingering seriph, unuttered phoneme? 

88 of you, Al-Astals, a felled tree,

Brash in chaotic profusion, milled

To scroll gone blank, gone

White, gone missing. They practice

Erasure, the wolves. They try it 

Here too, tentatively. We wonder

Who will do the accounting. I

Wonder, Salam, at what account

Might bear value, might imagine

All of the living gone quiet. The

Beehive of the family room at

Holiday, erumpent joy lighting 

Your face at a gift, your slow 

Growth into humanness. Who 

Accounts for those private freedoms

In living now reft from you? Running

Through a forest in the rain? Toes

At a water’s edge? Fugitive bursts

Of want & glee? Instead, this

Cadastral, this ministerial din, reduction

Unto figure, disappearance into

Inked table. Can we weep for 

The counterfactual, Salam, for 

The apophantic? Can we weep for you,

Strangers in our humanness? I will

Sing your name this morning.