Ghazal in which I am read aloud until I tremble

A grape pulsed open on my tongue, without force—a slow fever.
Its skin, torn silk; the seed inside whispers barakah.

Steam unmade the mirror in mourning. The bath cradled
congealed breath. I sank backward. The water muttered barakah.

My language has no borders. It tunneled through the floor
of heaven, humming, wet with sinew and syllable. Barakah.

At the first crack of grammar, my wrists flicked open, and roses spilled
from them. Beneath the ledge of my neck, a tongue flared once in barakah.

Summer came, slouched against the porch. You touched your throat—
the throat touched you, the you I touched, touching barakah.

I climbed onto your lap. A deer in heat, my back rain-lit.
My hips broke wide, a fractured vessel for barakah.

Your forehead on my thigh. Your breath brightening my skin.
Your spine, smoke arched through dusk’s half-light. Barakah.

A bird pecked at the sweat from my collarbone, frantic, so frantic.
I let it. Its beak left a crescent I traced as barakah.

Once an angel came to me and intoned: ياعليقم
I turned my head—tremulous, sublime—my shoulder still warm with barakah.

مريمالناصرة kneels in Rafah. Her breath simmers on bomb-broken glass.
A child, scalp gaping open with blood, suckles his thumb. Barakah stutters.

مريم kneels in the rubble and cries, God, I have nothing left to give you.
Not even this. Not even this is barakah.

ܐܠܗܝܐܠܗܝܠܡܢܐܫܒܩܬܢܝ؟

Later, you touched your throat again, slower this time—
touched the throat I touched, touched where I touched barakah.

I said barakah but what I meant: open me where I last refused.
Your tongue slipped open the inflection that made me break vowel.

Barakah.

Notes

ياعليقم — O Ali, rise
مريمالناصرة — Mary of Nazareth
مريم — Mary
ܐܠܗܝܐܠܗܝܠܡܢܐܫܒܩܬܢܝ؟ — My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? (Aramaic)
Barakah — blessing, presence, or transmission of grace; in this poem, a word the speaker receives, resists, and remakes.