By Fadi Abu Deeb

(Published originally in Inventory No.8, Princeton University)

On the road downhill and to the right
appears her sunny cloudy house
with its white descending walls
Flowered with the trees of villages
dead since the age of that sun
Exhausted, I snuck inside
frightened by the loud sobs of the dying outer realm
Everything has ended
—
She’s watering her flowerpots
She’s watering the trees of silence
whose oneiric shades veil the darkness of obnoxious consciousness
granting the secret noon a chance to radiate beneath the domes of blooming green
Her chanting flows slowly, prevailing over all ideas
Look, the devils who turn the pages of the mind have been nailed to the ground!
And the fire of listening kindles
I listen to the beating heart of a fetus as large as the universe
I am captivated by memories of my hand caressing her fingertips,
when time had been flowing on, unaware of us
—
She turned to me
as someone realizing my eternal presence at the threshold of the door
She said, as someone who had only ever known a low voice
with a smiling calmness that wasn’t familiar with longing:
“The water is boiling…
Come let’s dress the table
Let’s make an elixir for the night that will penetrate our noon
Come, let me teach you how to sail between the hills of my fingers,
and show you how to hear the echoes of the sea in the walls
…
Close the door!”