The truth is I’d do it again, turn into the winking eye
of a city flushed with fire. I hope I burn this time,
my body curling like the ruffled apron
on the hook, the pen-scratched books, the candles
cindered to scents. At least let me be
turmeric—cardamom—saffron sprinkling from heaven
like the dandruff of Mars. I want to be a spice
men burn for. I want to be architecture, the pillar
of a temple where men line to floss their tongues
on the salt snowing my truss. Salt cathedral. Salt
palace. Mountaintops crusted with salt. Country
whose borders are diamonds of salt or the salted coast
of a continent, its oceans full of the bones of women
like me, whose tombs are the only homes we keep—
GOD give me a name worth remembering.