Here my palm, somewhere else a house

broken into. Shattered windows sprawling

 

in place of an invasion. Every piece intact, cracked

into itself. Zephyrs gutting

 

tenderness into discretion for the world

to look through a bruised sky

 

collected in glass. In a séance, leaves

envy the natural sound carried

 

in crisps. Inside, chamomiles sprout to be crushed

under a wanderer’s foot. Wholly, unplucked.

 

An abandoned silk farm outlives the offering

of delicacy. A field is ransacked

 

for the safekeeping of next season’s crop. A pyre

clenched in my fist wafts softness for miles.

 

This juice was not squeezed out of unbroken fruit.

It is a name a thing comes from.

 

These pits don’t teeth plums without swallowing the soil.

My tips chiseled my tips obsidian smooth. Pried open

 

in mirrors sequenced with arrowheads fit for the cut

ready to fill me in.

*Ghomeedah means hide-and-seek in the Lebanese-Arabic dialect.

Originally published in Sukoon Magazine

Nadim Choufi is a Lebanese poet and his recent work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Versal, Sukoon, the Shade Journal, and elsewhere. He tweets from @nadimchoofs.