I read how candles made from human fat
glow brightest, how everything
can be seen in that light,
hunger, you.

I remember and forget your face.
it may be what Enheduanna,
Sumerian moon priestess,
wrote:
            my beautiful face is dust.

a river sings near your grave.
I tell you of a man
wrapping his body in newspaper
before putting on clothes.
he spoke of a bombed kitchen wall,
women struck by glass while giving birth.

in Belgrade, most have war stories.
in Sarajevo, it is colder beneath a sky
severed by minarets
but the women also know how to hold soil
for harvest
                   and burial.

I speak to you, but perhaps you’ve become 
a distant shorebird,
and the shore is also you,
but I am the sea,
salt-stitched, saying your name
though it does not pearl in the seashell of my ear.