mistook my grandmother’s language for a handful of ash,

mistook her songs for an apology, mistook her frail hands

for lava, the origin of butterflies ‒yellowish & greyish, blue

stars blinking towards its grave‒ mistook her swollen feet

for the inside of a jellyfish‒ the first time we found one at 

the beach, she mistook it for algae‒ mistook memories of 

her for a childhood of dreams where i mistook kites for wings

mistook sea for an assembly of rain, mistook sky birds for whales,

mistook my father’s heavy sighs for the entrance of miracle, took

her thickening silence instead of the call for help, mistook prayers

for my mother’s call for attention, said yes, instead of amen,

mistook my brother’s dream in which we wore black to sleep

for a poem ending in grief, mistook mine for tributes, mistook the

dusty photos of my grandmother & her lovers drinking beer for 

a world where nestlings sing the cardiomyopathy out of a limp body,

where god does not command silence into isreal, where canaan is my

grandmother’s body & i stand beside it watching a famine of pain stir

its wind across the city of an old god.