Mother,
your fingers flew before farewell.
Five flames flicked from the floor,
folding like fig leaves
featherless, faceless, fated to float.

Your smile sits in the sink,
caught between soap scrapings
and silver spoons
smudged by siren songs.

They flung your foot into the courtyard
curled like cinnamon,
coated in coffee grounds
and crumbling cement.

Your chest crushed inside the cupboard
where we hid sweets
from father’s fasting fingers.

The ceiling split like sesame,
showering sparks and distasteful stories.
Toys turned to thorns.
Tiles tore through time.

My tongue twists
through thickets of tumult.
I tried to talk to your torso,
but tiles stole your breath
and left numbing in rhythm.

I found your scarf,
frayed, fragrant,
jittering from the spout
of our broken teapot,
still steeped in cinnamon secrets.

Mother, see…
my slippers are soaked
with sorrow-slick screams
and sirens still sing
from the sockets
where your eyes once settled.

I saw your shoulder
shoved into the shelf
where we stacked schoolbooks
you promised I would read
when rockets rest.

Why did they rifle your ribs,
ride fire through our frame?

My throat trembles,
tickled by trauma’s trumpet.

Should I stitch you
from cupboard to colander?
Shall I serve your smile
on Sunday
and carry your collarbone to class?

My mouth is a museum
of your final moments,
fragile, fractured,
frozen in false fireworks.

Yet still I speak,
searching you
in every crack, and every char,
every crooked fork
and fallen frame.

Still,
I call you, Mother,
with the cinders in my sockets,
with the rattle in my ribs,
with the fog in my fists.

Fold yourself from flame.
Crawl back
clothed in candlelight,
crowned in cypress sap
and survivor’s salt.

Sit beside me
on this severed step,
and let me sing
a sonnet
of what still stays.