A’isha

 

 

Kandahar:  I saw the Americans like spiders in my mind even before they bloodied prayer

 

home of mud and straw with burlap for doors could not contain the minuet of evil

locked and loaded, a waltz of violence against a setting sun

 

            I never had a chance to say good-bye

 

young soldiers wrapped in bulletproof hives of indifference; boots on the ground; bodies in the morgue; the boy soldier fell first -- like a child’s toy

 

             when they took away my husband

 

prayer rugs soaked with the red nectar of resistance to a horror that had become familiar; uninvited intimacy; a bowl of chalau rice spilled on a dirt floor;

blood-spattered hijab, colors spilling from a turban untied -- no sunset prayer beseeching the Omnipotent winding east where Allah wept

 

            then the unthinkable that only war                   could think

 

A’isha new as dawn baby fat thighs creased, black button eyes looking for more did not cry, frozen in my lap like a porcelain china doll -- cold, the warmth seeping onto the pillow, bullet casing nearby punctuating like a period at the end of a sentence

 

            A’isha, her name was a prayer

 

when the sun hid itself in the ink of night,  it was not because the day ended…it was because it was embarrassed