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One Poem  

Hajjar Baban

Every Time I Get a Cold Sore

my mother says to spray perfume over the yellowed
flesh I douse everything except,
                                      I want her to be
right but sometimes I dream and I’m only
of fear after I wake. My heart around my head
see it only when God can punish me;
imagine looking down to her
helping her up the stairs,
     I outgrew my parents and no one cares
to hear it—
            I hurt     & I give it
to someone I cry & I let myself
alone                 I shout & I hear my mother leave
not the same childlike leftness     I am grown now
and don’t think too much that I wanted to learn how
to say the word ache for her when I first learned it
in school          I knew fear and so we went.
I knew tired & I was for most of it. So my mother tells me
I must’ve been afraid
of something in my sleep, though we both
know I left control to my body, didn’t shriek
as I had the dream again, as I got out of water
with rows of red fish on my chest, being
the human that took another’s life, no
I drew out the eagerness, learned to beg, sunk in
the spirit, asked no one what I saw in the morning.