loose strife [Say, when we woke those icy spring mornings]

Say, when we woke those icy spring mornings they were still there. The upper portion of their faces long ruined but you could still see the meaning in their hands, palms once covered in gold. We knew better than to call them by their names, Light that Shines Throughout the Universe and His consort, but there were stories of travelers lost in the foothills of the Hindu Kush and a distant brilliance that led them home. The way a candle physically enters your body after it has been snuffed out. The pearly smoke suffused in the air. In one school hundreds of miles away all the girls my age were poisoned, and last week outside the capital a woman like my sister was shot dead in front of a crowd by two men who forced their bodies into her body and then judged her an infidel so they could kill her and be done with it. After the visitors were blasted I had a dream. I saw a human man standing by a lake and no one was looking at him directly. His image on the surface of the water cleaner than anything in this world. In my dream the man said, “Thousands of lifetimes ago when my body was cut into pieces by an evil king, I was not caught up in the idea of the self.” Then in my dream someone picked up a rock and I woke up. It took almost a month, the great heads drilled with holes, then anti-aircraft tanks rolled in. Each hundred-foot niche now empty but each cavity left shaped like us, like a person. Before it happened we talked about it. Grandfather said don’t they have a share in heaven? Second Aunt said it was more realistic this way. God not in heaven but in exile.