Eyes set on hands
		flowing as an ink brush: 
	that’s when my best strokes  
			are continually rehearsed 
	over invisible rice paper. The air
		becomes dense, I move 
	as in a dry aquarium. 
		Each gesture creates 
			airwaves pulling me back 
		and forth as words 
	rearrange themselves, 
			unfold effortlessly
	on a constantly renewed
		board where signs and shapes
			merge and fall like autumn leaves 
	speaking within hidden folds.

	Until my father-in-law died that summer in Tucson, Arizona

He seemed to sleep 
in his suit and tie,
expressionless, 
the color of death freezing
his shrunken features,
almost youthful in his eighties
as if an artist's pencil 
performed a final facelift, 
inverting lines
for a last farewell.

I knelt on the velvet 
rest in prayer.
thinking of the fig tree 
we once planted together, 
of how he always 
saved the juiciest fig
for me: "Here," he'd say 
"this one's from your tree... 
see how well I care for it?" 

	~~

I felt a pang in my chest,
leaped years and years back
to a January morning: a young
child, taken away for the day,
only to return to a house
filled with absence,
where all had forgotten
how to smile.
I was never told what had 
happened that day, 
in Heliopolis. “Your father 
is in the hospital,” they said.  

I awaited your return, 
week after week,
unable to understand
the silent procession, 
charcoaled silhouettes 
shading spaces								
once forbidden to								
our clumsy hands, 
beveled doors 
now wide-open, 					
black skirts hiding pink 
damask silk, flowing 
over gilded Louis XVI
chairs and Bergères
like a flock of Egyptian
ravens, threatening 
my caged love-birds
placed at the balcony edge.