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we have the same scars. your
body is the life-size presentation
of those photographs i see in humanitarian
reports. you said our bodies don’t belong
to us. even these bodies, you said, shall be left
when death summons us to the beyond.
we spend the evening watching stars, crawling
out of dying sun’s mouth, taking their places
on a night’s sky & this is how we learn
death is just a loss of form. we spend the harvest
festival with our lovers behind thin thickets
beyond the village. i said i could spend the next
with mine on a marital bed. but you said
not even our lovers’ bodies, too, were ours to own.
& when i told you to teach me how to do ayaya
(in case i married my lover in a këëny), you
taught me how to flee with bruised feet instead.