with loose hands that by day are fists
holding fear.
Men sleep and women are awake
because some men are dreaming
cobalt blue, the slowest death
carried by wind
and pure rain looking innocent.
Grandmothers feel this in their bones.
Aunts weep for no good reason.
Mothers guard windows of sand-blown houses
where men and children sleep.
This is a prayer that enters a house
and touches a lantern to light.
For the sleeping men and gentle work
of women. Their hands wash dishes in pans
silent as breath.
They touch water
and dream out the window
toward lost voices of children.
At the window bottles have changed violet.
Pale linen is blowing on the lines.
This is a prayer to save the soft gray dresses
of evening, blowing suddenly off the lines
of their bodies. To save the eyes
that watched flowers on wallpaper
ignite like a thousand suns.
A fire wind. A prayer against heat
that burns dark roses from shirts into skin
because fire passes first through the dark.
Newspapers held casually
write a day’s history
across the sleepless faces of women.
Burning, another world enters
through the shadows of bodies
flashed on walls,
the dark wedges between blue fingers
that were praying for sleeping men and children.