The House on Stilt Legs

I have just arrived, and the air is wet.
The breeze lifts up my skirt 
to have a look.

The neighbors file in, bring 
baked plantains, chickpea roti, 
goat curry so spicy my eyes melt. 

They finger my curls, touch 
my long black eyelashes. 
Laugh.

In the street, boys hiss 
at my back with lips, tongue, 
and breath. Young men 

emerge skinny and dark,
from among tall sugar cane 
fields, machetes in hand.

Just for you, they say, and pull out 
long, clean, fat stalks, bleeding 
sugar from the cut.

The four-leaf clover holes that line 
the edges below my bedroom ceiling 
are portholes to the stars.

Fireflies come in with the breeze,
turn my mosquito net into a green-
flashing southern sky. I tell them 

about Tehran’s dusty streets and high 
walls, gardens where every tree steals 
innocence from eyes, where every rose 

offers her thorns to stitch mouths, 
where crows blacken the sky snitching 
on the comings and goings of the moon. 

I sketch in the air the bell jar 
in which I lived and almost died,
show them the roof of my mouth 

where a secret grows like moss, the inside 
of my belly button where the cord to my 
homeland’s womb remains uncut.