Come to Me Now

Poetry

Neolithic wall painting from Tell Bouqras at the museum of Deir az-Zor. Public Domain

The meat —
Tender and sweet
Falling off the bones

The blood —
Glistening nimbus
Exiting the rind

Come to me now

Bare, scraped
Thinly wrapped in life membrane

Come to me now

Bleak but warm
Soft but dead
Pretty but derelict

White as a corpse
Silent but pounding
Down but in command

Song in the sea, people in a circle
Flowers and gauntlets, swords and rayon

Come to me now

Tears and laughs
The only place — home

There is no shame, in pleading for a place
For life in the mud. For life after all

Come here, you know

We don’t end
We fly in the nets
As a woman and her cloud
As a man and his kite shaped gut

We fall off the bones
We are tender and sweet
We stay in the hole of life
We are the white ends of death