Abecedarian for What Is To Be Done

अनार is our word for pomegranate I say as you
brush the hair from my face / wish you would
come closer / or if not teach me how you roll its
dark bulbs along your tongue without bursting / here
every red seed has stained my teeth / the words for your
fist unfurling inside me like a rose fail me / my
gut feeling is neither of us knows as much as we pretend / so
حبیبتي is what we make do with / you say
it all depends on how you lace breath with wonder حبیبتي
just so / the countries between us swell with pride / a soldier
kills the animal instinct inside him to feel / anything but a kind of
love / the bulldozed village / precision-bombed school / become
muscle memory for some god / how do I host your
nightmares in my skull so you can sleep through
one steady night? / if my ancestors have shed blood is the
present tense or simple? / you say don’t care to know the words for
quenched thirst / innocent human / in any language
return me to touch / to this rough map of our
skins intertwined / read it right and it leads to / कल is our word for
tomorrow / with a genius for omission like all lovers / we
unpeel layers till the soft flesh sings and the stars gleam
vibrant in our bones / sometimes / practice doesn’t make perfect / yet
who knew sweat could taste so sweet? / if you
x-ray a revolution would you see the cracks? / कल is our word for
yesterday too / would you fix them? / how your mouth moves for
ज़ुल्म is how my mouth moves for ظُلم / حبیبتي just so

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