Bird of Paradise
The little girl who disappeared
when cut off by her womanhood
now rises like a phantom bird
whose language no one understood
except the birch trees and the wind
and old chairs and familiar stones
long gone, their traces in my mind,
their words a marrow in my bones.
Light in the marrow, iron red,
light on the wings, a diamond glare
against the darkness of the bed,
the arc of flight my only prayer.
And when at last, the shot is fired,
the arrow sails, a shooting star
that lands with what I most desired,
clutched in old hands, bony, poor,
yet fervent. Young heart of my mind,
whom I lost and buried twice,
let this scribe now write, though blind,
your history of paradise.
Siham Karami is a mother of five and owner of a technology recycling company. Her work has been published in Innisfree Journal, 14by14, Sonneto Poesia, 4and20, and The Whirlwind Review.
