For years it’s been in my head,
your ****** face, life misplaced,
in a countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

Élodie, God’s children wed
in al-Quds. Is He dead, has He fled, been replaced?
For years it’s been in my head.

BBC, ABC, al Jazeera, Haaretz…
no story the same, not one has depicted
a countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

Throat constricted, mind conflicted, eyes red
from the pounding bullets our ancestors’ war has inflicted:
for years it’s been in my head.

You were only four, too young to understand a soldier’s hatred.
I dropped the remote as the casualties were listed,
recited in a countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

It’s 2pm, Élodie. I’m drinking. Two years ago this day you were dead.
Eyes wide for the cameras. For God, arms outstretched.
For years it’s been in my head
in a countenance more in sorrow than in anger.

I lost the rhythm of my heart
when my toes curled over those
chemically white grooves of
safety and bleach-ridden tile.

tightly, I wrung my right hand through your hair,
while the left imposed on your hip.
light sprinted past your scalp,
scampering over the night-riddled tangles
while we refused to detach from the grip of morning.

the palm of my skull,
my temple and cheek,
were a part of your hard skin, cleansed from dirt but
laden with chemical residue.

I was afraid your tattoo would leave an impression.

no words fell from our swollen tongues,
saving the humidity from pollution:
we gripped each other’s thoughts straight from the throat.

I ripped away my head from your chest, unzipped
my eyes to stare past airborne drops of liquid
straight into yours
while I gripped onto you all the harder.

finally, the marketing schemes and skin cells
were rinsed and toweled,
leaving us smelling
like everyone else in this,
yet another,
hotel.

I’ve worn out your name,
syllables a ragged kind of rugged frayed
from sitting so long at the back of my tongue.
It’s been toyed with and played with and thrown around
almost as many times as your heart.
It’s never sore – it’s
still amazing how I can buy
your attention with two simple chords.
I want to wash it, fold it, smooth it, perfect it,
and tuck it away in the back of my skull
for safekeeping.
Because every time I hear the label
given to you by your parents before they could meet
the personality it was branded into,
my world gets jolted in a way that’s
unfair when you are so far away from
goosebumps and scratches and
lights out night(‘)s out warmth.

She spotted him once, in the early morning:
golden nectar spun upon the pillow, knotted into
a mane thick enough to hide his face from all sorts of bad dreams.
Time inhaled the dust motes playing in the sunlight and held its breath.
“I know he’s over there doing god knows what with that woman. I still feel guilty.”
She was ready to pounce. Muscles taut, crouch-hidden, she analyzed her prey.
A handsome lion he was. But no match for a skilled huntress.
A little hungry, that lion was. Hungry enough to gobble up his favorite gazelle from the herd.
“She’s my baby girl. I’m not going to risk losing her because of ...us.”
Who else was brave enough to disentangle the doe from the beast?
He roared and snarled and ranted and growled, but she never took her eyes off him.
Mommy always said you could lose yourself if you didn’t keep your eyes where they belonged.
“Let it go. I love you both, but he came to me first.”
Time coughed; the little huntress lunged into the lion’s den, well aware of the danger,
enough to be terrified when silence enveloped the savanna sheets.
Alone, she stood at the edge of the bed and watched her beloved gazelle morph into a lioness.