I Am Here — Rasul in St. Louis

for Najlaa, Lori, and Kathy C.

I

Even before the bullet,
I was waiting.

Waiting for my window to open on a new world,
for the gray, warring streets to turn green
and Baghdad’s gun barrels to become songbirds.

Waiting for sidewalks to repair themselves,
for soccer balls to appear,
for schools to blossom like gardens with children,
with laughter,
with learning.

Waiting for our barren world to bear fruit,
waiting for rain to return it to a lump of liquid clay
and my unpopulated hands to sprout sculptor’s fingers
so I could refashion it.

O! the visions I had
locked in our home, listening to gunfire,
bomb blasts,
condemned time dragging its ball and chain.

O irreconcilable world!

II

The hand that held that gun,
the tendon and muscles that flexed that finger,
were not waiting for me,
but I am waiting.

The bullet that pierced my eight year old face like a tooth,
the bullet that swallowed one eye
and tore open the other,

the bullet that buried me
was not waiting for me,
but I am waiting.

I am waiting for light like a rescue worker to reach me.
Can you hear light?

Every day I hear its feet.

Every day its voice and fingers come closer.

I have heard it above me
excavating like rubble the scar tissue on my iris,
trying to dissolve the blood clots blocking my sight,

the luminescent hand of the surgeon
trying to find me at the bottom of this hole
and pull me out,

like my birth,
when the hand of my mother’s midwife
drew me out of darkness
and for the first time, light,
glorious light,
like a paintbrush

began to teach me: color, shadow, depth,
the shape of my mother’s face and the language it speaks,
the unbroken authority and unimpeachable tenderness
in her dark, brown eyes.

Waiting, yes,
and calling: I am here!

July 2008