The mango tree outside the mosque had grown wild, its branches cast shades over the rusty train track. The cars’ skeletons in front of our old house were in a nearly perfect line, as I believe we would all be on the day of resurrection.
Into the Sun
I had asked to go with him, but he told me he needed to do it alone, going on and on about growing into himself, wanting to fully become the man he was meant to be so that he could do right by me, and I had told him he was everything, yet my protests did not matter.
The Wooden Elephants of Herat (and other poems)
He is ten now. He does not remember teething
on my dog tags or holding my sweat-stained
patrol cap in the Fort Knox gym the night I came home.