These Hands which I Fold in Prayer for You

If it were stones that you carried in your hands,

I promise I would take them from you.

If this burden that bends your back

and fills your chest with the calls

of a thousand crows

were anything that I could hold for you,

know that I would fall and open my hands to you now.

But I cannot take the lines from your face

and dig them into my own skin.

What you carry cannot be handed over.

You cannot lay down the distance

between yourself and your home,

the waiting, the not knowing who

has survived another sunset.

You cannot put down the sleepless nights,

wondering what the rebels are doing to the one in captivity

or the unfamiliar scent that hangs in the air

as the sun shines through the shattered window

of your old church.

You carry the eyes and the stories of your dear ones,

the long quiet roads they must travel to the village,

the mass graves in places where no one was meant to be lain,

the child who hides in the bathroom and continues to scream

after the shooting had stopped.

You carry the moment when you turned the corner towards home

and learned that man with his weapons

has painted a new landscape over your city,

a sea of old stone gasping for breath beneath a black sky,

a single minaret hovering

in silence

that everyone is afraid to break.

Pictures from Homs, Syria