blue butterflies trick ants into picking up their eggs
because it mimicked the face of the evening sky.
for the first time, father was not home
and won’t be coming back anytime soon.
I was a boy of seven and there is a storm brewing in me
but everyone feels it’s the hunger
& the imam said I host jinn in my empty stomach.
and then I began to see myself differently,
as though in me are layers of makeshift restaurants
held together with the veins of dead soldiers.
until I could perfect the dilution ratio of her tears/
to pheromone, no one is moving out of this house.
all the tables are made of a convex mirror.
there is no need to run when it rains, the ice on the roofs
are the signs of a climate that has tried so much to resist change.
I was afraid the world would end/ a day after the blood moon,
I thought anywhere beyond the kitchen window/ is an empty space
to bury the men I love, so their memories can dangle from the tree
when the wind blows.