For a week we walked
the roadside without pavement
to the lake, cooked meals in the heavy
iron pan, slept in the afternoons
and talked easily, bare feet
propped against the furniture
The year, that year, had been especially
cruel. Sickness and war. I slept
chemically inside the hospital
while my first country fell
my grandmother leaving behind
books and gold to flee into the desert
home shrinking into the rearview
mirror and then gone
Before cutting into my body
the surgeon asks about my name
correctly pronounces the ح
the letter fizzing in his throat
After crossing into Egypt my uncle sends
a photo, my grandmother’s hair undyed
for the first time, shock of white
against her unlined face
I know I am being strange with my friends
on this holiday, disappearing
for hours into sleep, walking barefoot
between the back yard and the house
rolling lemons onto the floor to make
the baby smile and crawl toward them
On the seventh day we pack the cars
wipe out the fridge with bleach
Every day I’ve waited for another bad thing to happen
waking in the mornings and holding my breath
Because they made it out alive I am not allowed
to mourn: the book I’d left tented on a nightstand
my grandfather’s office furnished
in mother of pearl
Crossing the threshold for the last time, returning
the keys to the lockbox, we find the body
of a scorpion upturned against the hardwood
I am afraid to name everything
this year has taken
afraid there will be more
Its body not yet dried by time
tail like a beaded necklace and glinting in the light
I study its anatomy, its knuckled abdomen
an organ whose name I learn is book lung
Orion and the scorpion sent to kill him
eternal neighbors now in the night sky
I was just there, not eleven months ago
sleeping in the desert, on holiday
the dark hot with constellations, thick streaks
and swaths of visible stars
Pyramids jutting from the sand like so many
broken teeth. In the retelling I don’t think to mention
that we lived, only that we walked barefoot
that the baby crawled on those floors
Almost, I can’t stop saying, almost
My family lived, and still I can’t stop writing
about the house, the broken windows, the shot books
Prosoma, metasoma, pincers, mouth
In this way I waste my living
A gone blue room, gone garden
of gone succulents, my grandfather’s
gone grave. My living friends
teeth glinting in the low light
silverware against ceramic
Tarsus, manus, stinger, legs. Book
lungs, dark joints, the claws almost black.
