i don’t remember

if we kept any plants.

if we fussed over them
like new parents

worried that the water
wasn’t enough or the sun.

i remember a single window
was all we needed of light

and when we moved again
a small wooden balcony looked out

to a pitch black ocean of grass
and the half-radiance of fireflies.

below us the trees lined
the street like checkpoints

and every year their leaves would steal
a little more color off our mouths/

our young hair/ and our hands
were young too/ we dreamed

of a garden and a two-story house/
we dreamed of children

or maybe we were told to/
we talked of returning to the old city

of mild winters/ curved sky and stray
cats was the way we remembered it/

imagined going back there to the same
flight of early stairs where we first met

to meet again/ or never meet.

This poem appeared in We Call to the Eye & the Night: Love Poems by Writers of Arab Heritage, edited by Hala Alyan and Zeina Hashem Beck and published by Persea Books.