i remember a single window / was all we needed of light

December 12, 2023
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.