I don’t feel the rotation of the Earth,
not even when I see
the cities moving backward
through the train’s window,
one by one.
Not even when I return
each time to the same place
where birds pick up the mornings
with their beaks and spread them away
as new circles of light.
Not even when I sleep
and see you alive in my dream
and then wake knowing the dead
didn’t rise yet from their death.
Not even when I find myself
saying the same thing over and over
as if those words were oars
cutting through a river
we cross in turns
with our untold stories
to that same shore, in silence.
____________________________________
By Dunya Mikhail, from In Her Feminine Sign, copyright © 2019 by Dunya Mikhail. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
