Some women in my country are taking the fate of rivers
cut through their rite of passage,
mouths clasped into a whole fist.
.
What fog obliterates the dream
of land under wet moonlight?
.
Our women pray with relentless
voices for rain to join tributaries.
.
They hold an ignition of obituaries
on their laps. The unbridled hymnal
.
becomes a prayer for sustenance.
A country folded into a roll of paper
.
in the color of its flag. A steady echo
beyond the windswept line of control
.
blurred into the harbor of escape.
Say another name for worship
.
is when all the glass bangles shatter
over a stone. What sound soothes
.
this excavation of inheritance through
the fallow fields? When our women
.
escape through a sea, they knit
mythology by what they leave behind:
.
a flag, independence, and country.
When our women pass an ocean,
.
they sing in praise for larkspurs.
They one-acquaint with the smell
.
of rain as the cumulonimbus burst
brings water to the rivers.
.
Say mercy is another name
for water. Say water is another
.
name for escape, or unclenched fist.
After violence, an embrace of singing.