In a Time of War

Seven angels stand
aside the Mosque at al-Nouri,
six of them my brothers

who died for nothing.
The seventh is my sister,
who lives in a cloud,

seeking a poem
to clothe the six she lost,
to deliver them

back to her. I watch her
from the bakery near
Ash-Shouhada, dreaming

the quieter dreams
of she as a girl, her black,
barren eyes, her skin

the serpents left behind.
She knows the night,
she says, the unruly

harmony of her city
that laughs past longing.
The trees explode.

She carries a notebook,
she knows fortitude,
and she whispers to me.