THERE IS NO HOME, IF THE STORMS SLEEP WITH US

Here, my tongue is of the dead who weeps in silence.

Here, in the turmoil of my eyes,
this carnage leaves no word nor prayers in the mouth.
The darkness of grief is the heavy cloak
of remembrance is the blandness
of dust is the displaced names of silence.
I live in the mouth of Charybdis where prophets make
minarets out of the bloods of disciples, where every
mirror of wound reflects the torn robes of history, the ruin
of beauty, mothers wailing behind barrels, sisters breathing
unevenly behind altars of broken hymens, the blood of the dead
streaking into the skin of cold floors.
There has been no darkness capable of gathering our ruins into light.
There has been no curse able to engrave prayers on the tongue of this home.
There is never a stomach as this, that ruptures and ruptures
with each dosage of pills, with each gulp of honey.

What is the fate of the blood of the ones across the seven rivers of our hearts?
What is our fate- we who are left to break beyond reins and gather again
Into nightmares and tears?

We sit in the hands of fears, in the bury of our grottoed marrows,

watering the cracks of the walls where yesterday’s reeds milled through.
They say: water is healing.
Water your pain, water your wounds, water down the salt of grief
whose streaks will always remain, either at the summit of dreams
or in the scars of every generous heart.

These days, we only see ourselves as mere dialects with no love songs but dirge,
We say no prayer, we say no word, we make no silence- even silence is a prayer.
Because ,greater than light, the tears of our eyes, even in these darker rooms,
lighten up the spaces of dead hearts; brings to end the crucifixion of truth,
the aflame tongue of home.
There is no such home with kids memorizing the names of lost siblings.
There is no home, if the storms sleep with us.