During the long drought,
the land frizzled, then went ablaze like hair.
For weeks, I swept the wings of weak and dying bees.

Like my parents, and their parents,
having abandoned ship, the honeybees were confounded
by electric frequencies—and I?

I was suffering the outrage of my fate.
So, that was my womanhood, then,
that great dormancy. Predictable,

how I was instructed by my hunger—
the woods austere behind their camouflage,
the moon a lone guerilla.

The body combats what it wants.
I refused to eat; my womb
ascetic, balding as a priest.

Docile, I submitted to my flesh,
never asked it questions—what did it mean
to be an Afghan and a woman?

I can’t recall how my new life began, that first September,
when the diagnosis chafed my knees.
Was I in grief or prayer?

Just the scent of uterus (wet dog
and sandalwood) and the bee-funeral burning
on my compost heap remain.

What melodrama I was,
among bee husk, melon rind, and rotten fries.
But now, arid as a stone, I can admit

that I wanted children
only so I could name them, and thus
sentence them to an ancestry I lacked.

Noa—princess of the animals. Meaning motion
and longevity. A train, a wooden ship,
a white curtain hissing in the wind.

And my son, Elias.
The faithful arrow shooting
toward God. He’d be both a Muslim and a Jew.

By a damson tree, we’d wet our lips,
devour fruit: some worms, of course,
but all the plums already blue.