Inheritance
I break a mirror of three. My cats break even more. Evil eye, I hear my father’s voice echo in the back of my head. When my mother’s wedding china smashes on the hard floor, she murmurs a prayer. Mirror images. I see you see you see me through sea, blue, and Etel’s yellow mountain. I see her mountain in Berlin and cry. Arab apocalypse. I want to unravel my ghosts. I want to press their laundry and brew sweet tea. I want them comfortable in my skin, crossing the realms. How many thousands of years did it take so we could exist? A bomb silences the eons foretold. I am only an echo of my mother, filled with the brightness of her love. I exist because of my mother. I carry my mother’s land for her. Indomitable. Reflections are mirrored in reflections; we are water, Summer. So Etel says. 53 days, and all I think about is how we become our mothers. Reality cannot deal with itself, and so enters the urgency of the poet: the keepers. Etel says this, Summer. I am frightened. Let my labours move a stream if not a sea. I have pulled the bells of revenge and became water. 57, all I have in my spine is an unwavering gaze. I am my mother’s daughter. Bint immi. Bint mama. In Berlin, the taxi driver spits out his coffee upon the understanding of truth; the dialect of body in nationality. But your Palestinian is perfect. Yama. I cry in Berlin, in Cairo, in Amman, in Salwa, in the end of time when I am called to witness my life I am called as my mother’s daughter I am called as my mother I become Leena bint Tesreen. It is my mother who walks me, guides me; it is my mother I see in the expo marker and the kites; the sea and its love; the garden and the land. I did not know peasantry, but I wrapped Yama like wool. Mirror, mirror, will you tell me when they will fall? Sword and neck. Expo marker and kite. Illusions and mere dust. Fires and mountains. A land hostage on my throat, doused in gold. My mother picking stones from the river and sea.
