for Ibrahim
the living imagine it is bad for
us, the suddenly dead, they have
forgotten how wide their arms
stretched to embrace the world
when they grew out of the mother
in the years of screaming since;
they remember only cold terror.
my brother’s dream that night, my
pale palm reaching, resisting the
dark, the thuggish rushing-away,
which he, seeing me taken, couldn’t
grasp to hold me, reach to pull me
free, is a true dream, but colored by
life’s fear into a story of life’s fear.
the pain was no more than a jolting
surprise that the body had been
constriction, as the womb before it,
and the angels did not explain but
embraced me, a returned brother!
that pale palm, my hand, did not
reach toward Ibrahim to be saved,
but, saved, called au revoir, and waved.