The Moon That Turns You Back: Poems

by Hala Alyan

Aren’t we all waiting like unrung bells, and hadn’t Fatima already died that night, and Nadia too, and the city, and the house, and in that hotel bed, in that flesh that is their flesh, in that bone that is their bone, their every season, wasn’t I only remembering?

I want small churches and noisy continents. I want you. I want you better. I want you moved by what moves me: God, glass, light.

I circle you like a devoted planet.

My daughter dreamt of lions and the army came within a week. Have you seen a city go dead as jade? Our houses grew dust.

This is the hot jinx of daughtering: we knew our mothers and our mothers knew dust.

She waited for me after all, in that restaurant by the sea where the waiters sang to each other and we both wore yellow and I told her how Paris made me want to start my life over. Made me believe it was even mine.

I said to nobody, I wanted love like knees on a prayer rug.

I carve an apple at the seam; I am awake. I am a metaphor: air and sugar and blister, a termite munching at the floorboards. You speak of nostalgia like you’re the only one who ever lost something, tore down a highway like a fever at night, fucked in a bungalow. There are wars you can’t dream up.

Sometimes it rains. Sometimes you’re three years away and I’m the interlude.