I inhabit you, the tempered stage that is a body.
I inhabit you—the gaze is silken, a nod to the ways we share memory; history a
transmission of
our eyes on us.
I pretend you
and you become
the real-life image of me. I adopt your ruins,
one aged and new story of an elder carved out by a train
an elder forgotten in the smallest town known to man.
Each memory is a ruin,
a gift from our shared iris
inside.
I remember
One father unlearning himself, identity becoming a steepening slope.
My own mouth knowing, and so saying:
My daddy remembered only my name, even after he’d lost his own,
lost everything.
I remember us.
I remember
One mother’s hands pouring dough on the flat pan, laxoox perforated and tight
One mother’s hands pouring dough on a flat pan, laxoox perforated and tight
An affection drawing circles over our heart
The fingerprints flattened against the tempered plate,
The memory drawing pathways in the dark.
We
Recede into each other in the place where stories reside.
I give thanks to your ruins
I am becoming your—
I eat up your ruins
I am becoming you.
Oubah Osman is a Somali poet from Djibouti and Ethiopia. She has been published or is forthcoming in CV2, Room, The Puritan and Unpublished City Volume 2. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Guelph and is currently living and working in Toronto, Canada.
