for Fady Joudah
“By then doctors and poets//Would have found a cure for prayer” from After
you said that weekends were lonely
in a poem I once read
while watching a cauldron
bubble out toward the east
just before the sun
steals light from the wet sky
clouds fly out from Congress Street Bridge
you detailed muscles in a body
your language wounds like a ligature
tightening around my small heart
I write careful notes
I had never taken an anatomy lesson
smoke brews on the horizon like a concealed prayer
I wish I could ask you
if we can walk together from this
epoch to the next
like Darwish
forgetting to die