By Sara Kandler
We roam our Brooklyn streets
neighbors huddling
all of us ghosts
chat softly with our young son
gaping construction site
fat pigeon circling
while tiny papery fragments
fall from the bright
September sky
settling on our forearms
We blow at them
and wonder
fibers of a love note?
pencil shards?
a fingernail?
No choice
but to inhale
these ashes
the nuclear fallout
we’d only imagined
Radio voices tell us
this is not a war
between East and West
but we feel it so crushing
clash of cultures
sorrowful bequest
How to stay close
in this tsunami of distress?
At night our toddler
drifts off to sleep
nothing to do but
curl around him
our backs arched into
a bony heart
a cage
a brace
a frame
Nothing to say
no words
no lexicon
no name
for this disaster
this massacre
Leila saïda
my husband whispers in Arabic
good night
kisses our son’s doughy forehead
the quiet metronome
of his breathing
so soothing
then movement below
something shifting
landforms drifting
readjusting
leila saïda
a soft spoken promise
draws the dunes of Fire Island
toward those of El Jadida
to form a modern day Pangea
and we dream
of another radiant morning
the ground trembles
then surges skyward
tall towers of stone
this time arcing
bonding the continents
finally, we’re home
*This poem first appeared in the poetry journal ONE ART.
Follow Sara on Medium: @sarakandler
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