She asks what her sarcoma means. Does it hold the earth in its myth?
My offering is poetry, its lens seeking clarity with syntax and myth.
This is July. Thorny shrub in the valley, slices of guava,
shade of eucalyptus, camels on their haunches chewing pith.
The courtyard’s festoons, carvings on a thousand pillars—
you are moved by embroidery on stone, idols part of a monolith.
History cools in the dusk. You look down on your city held in blue,
and orange bands, it sways with late summer’s swath.
There, the crab placed by Hera—its shell the sky, each scar a star,
Marrow of the night fills with a million stars, each a lymphocyte.
We join an army of devotees, hold brass plates and bells, willing
yet frozen like terracotta warriors facing afterlife with faith.
Traveling such distances can clarify understanding, or nothing
at all. Dust arrives, quiet wingbeats inhabit marrow and breath.
I knew the ghazal is the cry of a gazelle when cornered in a hunt.
Nivas is abode, but which? In whose radiance or diffusing light?
