I watch you wipe a stray tear.
You have your mother’s eyes
Curling eyelashes and brown
A scary calm, too calm for thirteen

I watch the droves, black veiled women
Their eyes bent with sorrow
A month of dawn to dusk fasts to purify
A month of pleas to bear His will

I sit by the shroud
white, the color of pain at rest
white the glee at first ever snow
white, the color of a cry to the skies

the mayyat: green-glitter, jasmine-lily bedecked
I yearn for that “let’s go!” echo
gray skies overcast
palm fronds standstill
watch this final goodbye