Original Sin

Childhood

for Sarah

The streets of childhood 
are a labyrinth of dead ends.

No map leads back to the house 
where the dead grandmother, still living, 

stands over the stove, and the smell 
of stew wafts through the house. 

The toddler coos 
against his mother’s breast,

and the daughter of the household 
weeps in her bedroom. 

What cannot be saved 
from the floods is lost in the drought.

Brecht strapped a door 
to Antigone’s back but misplaced the key. 

The door can be interpreted 
as her grave. In the days of ignorance, 
the Arabs buried their daughters alive. 

Girlhood is a besieged
country. None can come and none can go. 

I stumble through the years 
of my life searching for the key 
that will unlock the burden of my 
inheritance.

The past is as opaque 
as the shroud of faith. The future is a country 
of warring factions. 

Fearing the breach, I retreat. Or, perhaps, 
fearing the retreat, I breach. I have arrived 

from some distant place to tell the weeping girl 
that even Antigone knelt. 

Girlhood is not the end of dreaming— 
the kingdom falls. 

The floods have become infrequent, 
and I have touched every stone as it dried.

Motherhood

I tend the plants in my garden and answer their crude need. A mewl cuts through the night 
and I rise out of habit. Someone is hungry and the responsibility is mine. The guilt, too. 
I separate nuts from their husk, fruit from its skin, and leave a bowl on the table 
for the closed mouths of this house. I lower my gaze in front of all who my power might erode.
Once I was a girl and I was spared. A God showed me mercy, and I hold the debt. 
In this country every subject must heed the call of her master. All emperors think they are less cruel than their predecessors. I am a mother, and yet, I have no dependents in a court of law. 
I unclench my fists and restore what I have razed. Loss rips through me, not unlike a child. 
My grief strikes the horizon like a rising sun. It covers the Earth with its bulbous hands. 
A mother carries the stench of her lack. I am ashamed of my desire, its dumb simplicity. 
This week it has rained without respite. I flood and flood.

Original Sin

Birth is my mother’s original sin. The first country I left in a flurry of blood. 
The womb is not Eden. Or maybe it is. A garden of dark and buried things. 
At night I dream I am pregnant. In the morning, there is milk between my thighs. 
My mother sleeps in the next room, henna-dyed hair, crown of berries in the morning 
light. Bachelard wrote that the purpose of the house is to protect the dreamer. 
Who will protect the dreamer from the violence at the center of her dream? In Islamic 
theology, each sin is a spot of black on the heart of the believer. I want to inoculate 
the ones I love against the accumulation of night. My sister was born in a river of blood. 
Red of the autumn leaf’s descent. No holy man could clear a path for her. A girl turned 
lamb at the feet of Abraham’s piety. My mother’s prayers were answered, but she paid 
the price nineteen years later. Debt clots the family bloodline. The dream of the homeland dissipates in the early hours. To some Eve is to blame for the dream that has been lost. 
Adam is blameless as all boys will be. Eve, a woman rising spectacularly from the mud, 
listening to the fervor of the body from which she’d sprung. A woman descending
from heaven in a haze of terror. She is no one’s daughter. During labor the cervix is effaced 
by pain. Even the birthing process must bend to bureaucracy. Pain is the portal between worlds, between my mother’s country and mine. Was I not enough? I imagine Adam asked on their first cruel days on Earth. Even stone yields when at the mercy of water.