![[for Ma’s last google search: countrys where muslims are safest] photo](http://s3.amazonaws.com/hobartpulp/photos/5673/full_cropped_55795168_10100254040254968_106770730904977408_n.jpg)
after Agha Shahid Ali[1]
What did you last wish? For goodbye to not be the only nation?
Was it for the sun to touch you like the temperates? A softened tyrant. A daisied flame.
I, your map of marrow & memory. Did you wish to uncrack me, return your secrets
to the pilgrims of amnesia? I taste Delhi’s hot sandstone tongues, panting from
prophecy to prayer to prophesy the exiled heat back to body. I press it to my lips
if the rhinestone cools on your bangles, fake the iamb of your pulse against the shining
not-gold. Mother and land, the last rains will be your absolution.
The pneumatics of sky and sea will pardon your promises to vapour. Do you see the
end to this bordered tale? Your tincture of miracle is only water in Mecca. What did you ask
of the last city? To be a door, a heart? Please. Ma, only believers pray against
the will of God. Listen, I am safe in this tutelage of delusion. A parallel
world predicates to your noun. Home is where you live and nobody consoled me with a lie.
[1] The first word of each line forms a line from Agha Shahid Ali’s ghazal Even the Rain, ‘What was I to prophesy if not the end of the world?’
