A few days after solstice, I follow bobcat tracks to the lake.
The moss is glowing, the water all thawed, the cold
a kind of wholly coat. A willow, bald without its leaves,

towers over its frail reflection. I sit on a bench, begin to read
old journals. Then I close my eyes and cringe before that girl,

the younger me, makes another bad decision. I want to tell
that girl to stop running, trespassing, stop showing off wounds
to strangers like some perverse shadow puppet flailing inside

the theater of her brooding, restless heart. I tell her to stop and tie
her shoes, to check for ticks. I urge her to banish her urge to tear

the peonies up from the soil just to see the roots naked, render
them wild, but she’s wistful and shifty and cannot hear me—she skips
up the mountain or down the stairs onto the train platform, no coat,

dives dumpsters for breakfast, dances all night. Hitches rides
from boys on motorbikes. Meets lovers: someone who dressed hair,

who threw their ID cards in a fire; someone who could write a line
in an extinct script, someone who studied ocean waves. She’s fallen
for the stories—I know how that story ends. On the floor,

too anguished to write, she curls her spine and holds her breath.
Stop crying, for god’s sake! I can’t look—so I face the willow.

But it also weeps, and now I’m weeping. I’m not on the other
side. Ink leaks from the pen, catching up to the speed of rue
and awe. On this day, I’ve found that girl at this lake, alive

and well after all these thrumming years. I admit I’ve missed her.
What selves have we buried alive, what selves have we survived?

All she wanted—to live and die at once. On a field of ghostly
wildflowers, the willow dreams of catkins—every season,

the bud and the husk, the cathedrals we’ve built out of sorrow.

The document mistranslates. You live / to collect your loved one’s losses / Their archive. Their quiet. What did you leave behind, oh ache ? / Oh whimper? / You are everyone I kn(o/e)w. When I stood in Al Akhdar I heard the streets calling your name. I heard the men / stomping their feet & I wept & I wept & I wept across the Dead Sea, across (mis)memories of my mother pacing / that miserable street. Somewhere you are smoking argeela Playboy / sunglasses clasped to your shirt. Somewhere I am sleeping next to you & you are asking me about death & I am too young too young too young to know loss / & I promise you we’ll live forever. There at the edge / of Jaafar Al-Husseini Street my father returns / home all briefcase & sweaty hands. Once, a rooftop wedding. Once, a certificate of death. My father collected / every report card of mine growing up — A Pleasure to Have in Class A Pleasure / to grow up in the states, a pleasure to be untouched by the news to hold a Certificate / of Participation for Your Obedience to the State. You Live Long Enough in the United States & You Mistake an Israeli Warplane for A Shooting Star my friend says / her eyes / offering me a photo of the Sea. In Amman, I Don’t Have an Address to Your Grandmother’s Home, my 3amo says, but I Can WhatsApp You the Coordinates. From Dearborn Ramleh is 5,977 miles or 9619.049 kilometers away / depending on who we audience. In Amman I was Case No. 2530400000131915 because I lost my Passport & when the man with a cigarette asks me where I lost it I mishear him / I mistranslate & I am afraid / to cough from the smoke in that too small room & lose another country not mine. The Air Here . . . I tell her . . . If It’s Anything Like Cairo It’s Like Sand + Salt + Warmth + Also Somehow Sweet. It Fills Your Lungs Different. It’s Easier to Breathe, she tells me. In Palestine — I can’t tell you about Palestine / I’ve never been but I have my Father’s Documents to prove us / The documents that rename me / refuse me / spectacle our birth & our death The Document as map as fiction as shame as eviction Please Rate Your Experience Please / stand in this Assembly / Line of Loss / Please: We’ve all wanted to be loved / by an impossible thing / it’s why the monarch butterflies keep following us around & This Is How It Is Habibti / Things Happen Until You Die / & All You Can Do Is Not Break