The Dark

The bridegroom stands at the altar of waiting, his eyes
a longing the depth of woods, his hands a shivering caught from

the emergence from water. At first, I was not in that dream but you
were, walking the animal of desire through the aisle, seated on

the pews were people whose faces were birthmarks etched with
grief. I think I saw a man nodding to the brief catalog of wounds

your legs archived; an animal limping inside you, gunned by regrets
owed to a battered childhood where war claimed everything that had name.

The limping is with blood, the blood is my father, & in my father
is a child I cannot give name to. I am pulled out of a farm of maize

into a pocket of shrill. I want to be remembered by the hands, tattooed
in henna, dipped into the pocket searching for my arm. I want to be

gathered out of the storm fastening my memories to dreams where I am
alone in the museum of bones, the relics of home on the night the soldiers

stirred the river, the night the moon hid behind clouds, the night the stars
fell, one after the other, into the pool of fire; the ashing of bodies claimed

in their own houses. I want to be remembered in my own dream, by the grief
that filled my hands, once a bouquet of flowers turned towards altar in the dream

where a little boy staggers out of the stage into a backdrop of silence.
The dark is eating him, & outside, his father shouts, tell me how to save you.