Babies lie in the dry of my Turkish,
they do, they say,
they carry small pieces of bread in a ringed hat.

They tell me when my smoke burns too thin.
They tell me when I try to create a life I cannot live
with parched lips and an empty glass.

I was once one of them,
the white chalk of an apple core,

but I have turned like a tricky grenade,
with romance hands on my back,
and only one hundred words to remember.

I have danced along the peaceful rims of walls,
and avoided all responsibility for love,

love,
that dried fat womb.

I will never be soft, never compliant enough
to feel the sun often rise in my chest,
a full, perfect circle.

I have burned like a tough crusted shell
with too many indentations upon the leg to raise it,
but you cry, you cry,
with the sounds of a terrible baby.

My body is left behind like a wretched salt lick,
starved,
like the silver that wraps your left ring finger,

a love like no other, one I can never remove.

Sins shoot from my hips like bolts
because I'm the type of girl who washes her feet in sand,
and shrouds herself in the middle eastern touch.

I am one with the veil and the cracked feet.
I am one with the cemented walls and the sheep herders.

I won't see you here, born and swaddled,
because I am a piece of dust that flies from the camel's back,
or that small space of wall that climbs from the neck of the great Mosque.

My legs still trudge the dirt like a mother,
but it's not the same.

I still look for the Suckler that peeks from behind stained glass,
or that glass-less window,
the hole in the faded rock that she used to wail my name through.

I keep watch for the Child that kept a brilliant watch over me,
with her full lips and splendid brown eyes,
like she was the answer to my solid straight hand.