From the Bookshelf of Around the World in 80 Books…

My Foreign Wife Is Dying And Does Not Want To Be Touched
My wife is a ship docking from war.
The doctor maps out her body in ink,
holding up her breast with two fingers, explains
what needs to be removed, that maybe we can keep
the nipple. Her body is a flooding home.
We are afraid. We want to know
what the water will take away from us,
what the earth will claim as its own.
I lick my lips and she looks at the floor.

Later, at home,

My Foreign Wife Is Dying And Does Not Want To Be Touched
My wife is a ship docking from war.
The doctor maps out her body in ink,
holding up her breast with two fingers, explains
what needs to be removed, that maybe we can keep
the nipple. Her body is a flooding home.
We are afraid. We want to know
what the water will take away from us,
what the earth will claim as its own.
I lick my lips and she looks at the floor.

Later, at home, she calls her sister.
They talk about curses, the evil eye, their aunt
who drowned, all the money they need
to send back. It is morning when she comes to bed
and lets me touch her. I am like a thirsty child
against her chest, her skin
is parchment, dry and cracking.

My wife sits on the hospital bed.
Gown and body together: 41 kilos.
She is a boat docking in from war,
her body, a burning village, a prison
with open gates. She won’t let me hold her
now, when she needs it most.

We stare at the small television in the corner of the room.
I think of all the images she must carry in her body,
how the memory hardens into a tumour.
Apathy is the same as war,
it all kills you, she says.
Slow like cancer in the breast
or fast like a machete in the neck.