do you hate him sometimes

for looking like the father that didn't want him?
like the lover who left you?
do you rest those burdens on his shoulders too,
let them settle into his skin like silt?

he's only six.
you shouldn't make him carry
your mistakes around in his stomach,
your ruined love letters
burrowing deep between his teeth.

you sing him the songs
you and his father used to dance to,
even though they make him cry. 

he will never stop loving you.
he will never forgive you.

afternoon thunder storms.

the sky tried to kill us today
murder by drowning,
the clouds a boy pouring water
on unsuspecting ants.

but the land here is greedy,
catching every drop in the
mouth of her skirt,
concealing the crimes
of her lover.

chusi

chusi misses home.

says it doesn't rain enough,

that the sky here is too stingy,

the ground always thirsty. 

she says the land makes her feel barren.

she cries when we take her to the canyons. 

she says that where she comes from, they 

believe hell is made not of fire and brimstone,

but rock and sand, bone dry, 

eternity for the damned is a desert.

she wants to know why we brought her here.

chusi dresses like the water tribes back home,

hair in half a dozen braids, hanging long down her back,

leather sandals and long skirts. her legs are strong.

made for swimming, she says,

not navigating jagged wastelands.

we found her sitting in the fountain 

in aunt caroline's back garden,

her skirt floating around her like a lily pad,

her fingers grasping at the plaster bottom,

searching for soil. 

chusi misses water,

says she's drying up here.

she braids her hair by the fountain,

and talks about the swollen bases

of the cypress trees back home. 

bil salama.

my last morning in libya, and the sky is so blue i want to cry. i want to break off a piece and stir it in my tea. take it home and put it on my dresser. give it to my father and tell him, "here, some libyan sky. it misses you. it says come home soon."

i danced on the veranda today.

the wind whipped from every direction. rain water puddled in pools around my feet. my aunt told me i was going to die. it was lovely.

misurata

is a city torn open,
but not broken.

homes hang from hinges
like bullet-ridden hearts.

day seven.

december nineteenth.

-

winter in libya is an impersonal thing,

the proverbial croak of death before

the birth of spring, people freeze

retreat into rooms, under blankets

relationships left to hang from strings,

libyan winters are chilling things.