Bismillah                will you grant me the valleyed crevice ofsomething silver and scouredwith sound.I wander toward guilt, a young traveler                looking for ruins,loving what I can,jagged with the narrow edge                of all I do not, prayerlike bees in my mouth.Allah like tasbihs in my mouth.How many times have I opened myself up                to God?The deer have returned from their                rivering, my tongueis sanded down by the languageof you,                so what is left?The wind, the wind, the wind...                thirty-three timesthe bead flickslike the ki ki kiof a Northern bird. How it howls                throughmy skin                into a landscape of wild hives—What is left has no holy.                A nameless bone, frayedand twinning into the moss.Not unlike undoing the seam                of a wound to find a country,every du'a a deep cut,                every recitation its blood.What is left has no Allah beyond the vineyardof memory—Again and again, the wind.Merciful Allah                grant me forgiveness, if anything.