The Ship

If you were to travel
to the opposite hemisphere
the moon
would appear upside down.
I think about that a lot.
— my moon is a capsized ship
to people way up north
— if I were ever
to set foot on the motherland,
my world would be flipped entirely.
What does the moon see
when it rises
over my ancestral home,
for it has been there,
while I have not?
Does it see my history, what
lies in my genes like a scripture?
Phoenicia to Rome to Constantinople. Conquests past, conquest present. Resilience is in the soil; we
uptake it through our roots — we
are the cedar trees.
Does it know that the ruins
it illuminates in the south
were my village,
my father’s village,
where my grandfather was raised before the war? The home I have never set foot upon
is a pile of rubble,
burned and dry. Through
televised reports I
smell the gunpowder,
hear the protests, the gunshots, the cries. My heart is in tune with my land, and it knows I
will be welcomed home
by debris.
And the moon —
my upside down moon rises over me, and it sees my longing, my grief,
my rage.