AISHA DOWN
Your dream of lions One day, the lions come back. The air in your August kitchen thick as a bruise. Now the rot creeps up the seams of the onions, now the moths try the linen tablecloth you have finally dared to smooth and lay. For years, you’d won. For years, stitched the hours closed over the terrible ends of the day. Now, seconds eat themselves into fat threads, now time burrows into your open, hoping palms. Somewhere you parents plant peas and beets in their rocky garden. Old wood keens on the fire pile, and bitter snakes show themselves, sleep on flagstone, and fatten. Now at last there is time: for milk and flies, for compost. Even the lions are changed. They gather at the winter gates, crunch the beets your mother tosses like icicles, like hearts.
POETRY | 111