Where the Body Rests
by Elmaz Abinader
Allah! Forgive our living and our dead, those of us who are present and those who are absent, our young and our old, our males and our females. O Allah! …. Allah is Great.
Our skin has turned to parchment
Our skin has turned to parchment
Our skin are the scrolls upon which
this history will be written
When your skin becomes phosphorous
speckled, yellow and scorched
Each cell is a star, constellations
flung upwards to create a new sky
When your skin is shredded
pounded to dust, you are not dead.
You are Instead ground into the earth
fertile and ready to plant
When your body detaches leaving
pieces of itself on the road
eyes are tiny pebbles the fist
a pine cone, corpuscles of Indian paintbrush
The deaths of innocents are not buried
or easily disposed of, no cloth can
wrap us tightly, no coffin an impenetrable
shell. We are not dust but
the mark is on the earth, the vapors
are in the sky, the arteries of the heart
are the rivers and streams, our hair waterfalls.
We are clouds and boulders, brush and willow.
Our skin has turned to parchment
Our skin has turned to parchment
Our skin are the scrolls upon which
This history will be written.