Ghaliyah

A woman, secluded in her white hijab, writes as morning spreads a rug of palm shadows across the floor. She worries about her daughter, that silence wailing behind shutters, coffee sips and leaves fanning streets where rain barely falls. Pensive, her poem describes the girl with some distance, some wishful thinking..


Crumbled stone and blood-stained moss,
she has seen too much
to veil the day in prayer.

Balloons are gathered,
black as clustered grapes
then released ---- a flock of crows
to count for the dead.

This offers nothing,
for my daughter, my youngest one.
She needs to feel a star
steal her breath
as it flowers on the sea
without a flash
of gunfire mocking the sun.

She is tired of talk,
broken ties ---- a winding wall
that divides shelled houses
from a host of olive trees.

So in these last weeks of March,
she moves to Spain, fills her hair
with the scent of blossoms

and lets it float her soul
like a sweet parachute
over hills until she lands
inside the gates of Alhambra.