when the sky is cleft asunder

Home videos run
and loop around themselves
like the Qur'an that plays
in the kitchen while she cooks with
olive oil and
El-Menshawe's voice.

My children have faces,
my children are unique
she tells herself as each verse
ends and begins.

The pots she inherited from her mother
when she married,
and the flat stove smokes.
Silence in kneading,
spotting her dough with red streaks
as her knuckles bleed.

My children were the future.