In color. A black man rests among the roses. He’s tired, he’s neither wounded nor dead. Petals stick to his hair like the light of winter. You turn around in your dream, bite the inside of my thigh . . . You’re right. I’m too much a coward to stay.

*

A sudden cold snap. Rain causes the blue mountains to rear up, stray dogs to bark loudly, it makes thin scarred cats hiss at their wet fur. The song of the mosque and the song of the church are two birds falling upward at dawn.

I’m so far away.

*

When I step into the shower my body folds around the water like a tongue. It’s never enough. But you can still run solo and barefoot, be አበበ ቢቂላ, not a nobody.

*

The field is surprised by አደይ አበባ:: They are harvested, golden, and pile on the kitchen table. In a few years, I will be dead. Now and then I peer through that door. There’s no darkness there; death is a long, white hour. Clouds gather around my shoulders like a hazy shawl, shroud my head in gray fog. They make me impenetrable. There was a period of time when it was important for me to seem silent, still, my hands folded in front of me.

You say: You should pray more often. Burrow into the belly of God.

*

ከረምቲ:: Hail rustles the horizon. The woods burst open: prickly pears, avocados, papayas. All new. All green and utterly without hesitation.

*

The contours of the dream. Girls in rhinestone and polyester, their arms around each other’s waists, shimmer down the street. They skip over puddles. They inhale smoke from a small coal fire. The second before you left the room your face appeared in such relief that I still recall the taste of your sharp profile, your lips, the black line of your eyelashes.

A long time ago someone started walking. It’s the kind of thing that gets to your hips.

*

You say: If you don’t get used to speaking without words, if you don’t flip the meat when it sizzles against the stone, if you can’t kill a man with a single shot, then what is your mother tongue? But the heart beats regardless. A black woman stretches out on the bed with her hands between her legs. She’s not being recorded. She won’t appear in any photos.