God is like that favorite red dress
she got on her tenth birthday.
she loves it so much but it no longer fits.

Her father never stopped saying she was a poem
he wrote in her mother’s body & forgot its lines.
So when he left them, he left only a note: “Don’t look
for me!” & her mom did not bother. She took his
portrait from their concrete wall, together with
all the kisses he ever gave her & set it ablaze.

Her mom took her hands & whispered: “this is how love
becomes smoke, but you must never let it choke you.
when a man moves, move on. Kill the memories
before they grow claws. Let’s dance to the music of this
crackling fire, you are the dancer I always wanted to be!”

But how could she refuse her mother’s wish.
Maybe girls are nothing but a reincarnation of their
mom’s dead dreams. she sways left, then right
and grins as she sinks, while these numbers
float on her memory,

The numbers are even,
but things never break even.
6- -12 -18

At 6
A little girl fell into a black hole,
God could not catch her-
He was busy numbering her hair.

At 12
The same girl scoops mara water
From her mother’s water pot.
The memory of that bitterness
Makes her hydrophobic
& she is dying of thirst

At 18
Her flower vase is falling,
There’s no one to help her catch it!
& this poem is an alarm in verses.

Mara- bitter