Aracelis Girmay

On the way home, going,

with the hill & mammoth clouds

behind me, rushing to the house

before the rain, those beautiful Pakistani girls,

their faces happy as poppies, I thought, those girls

rushing home as I was rushing home

to beat the first small pieces

of rain falling down

like nickels in departing light. There

was the laughing of the beautiful girls,

shrieking gulls, five or six of them (depending

on whether I count myself), the bright

& shining planets of their dresses

lifting, just so, in the wind. & their black hairs.

& the black sound of horses, horses

hoofing it home, the click

& clop of their patent leather hooves—Still, it touches

my ear, this sound. I touch

my heart. I can’t stop touching

my heart & saying, Today is my birthday,

you see? For the beautiful clamor of planets

dressed as girls who, running home, have heads.

Whose heads swing black night, running home

on the black feet of horses, from the rain.

Now I understand. Today is my birthday.

It is Thursday, my day. My black day.

Three years ago, I stood on the dock near my father’s house

While the small shark suffocated & was killed.

He was like an angel culled up from the purple sea.

& the air smashed into him like an anvil

& his muscles sank desperately into the ribs. Terrible

terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible

to watch him that way.  More terrible to waste my hands, just

            standing.

At thirteen, when I first bled, came

the knowledges:

in the domestic space of the aunt’s laundry room,

to the work of the washer and dryer,

surrounded by the hangers, man-collars, and sheets,

my mother warned me of everything. This is my fear,

This is my fear, This is my fear,

This is my fear, she said.

And later, my pecan, colored brother

heading home from work with friends

in beautiful darkskinned

skins who were also boys and almost-men,

over the telephone, This is my fear, This is my fear,

This is my fear, she said,

for she loved us, and warning was

what she knew, in this country, loving should be.