Dahlia and Fadwa

When I see her come through the orchard toward my house, 
I begin composing answers to the words 
with which she'll challenge me, her vision 
precise and focused, as if every letter 
were drawn beforehand. She stops, stoops toward a flower 
she doesn't pick, and the word I'm left is sister, 

as if she were coming to visit her younger sister 
after a long absence, as if this stranger's house 
were where she'd watched my awkward gestures flower 
to eloquence, as if I had measured her words 
from a wider world each time a letter 
arrived, message inhabited by a vision. 

But I was the only messenger of my vision. 
My father died. There was no brother or sister 
but the orphan's clan of branching letters 
I taught myself. I moved from house to house 
with a dented trunk, a few books, many words, 
an acid fruit preceding its own flower. 

Am I named for a traitor or for a flower? 
Blood and fire have cindered and stained my vision. 
I cursed their politics; they praise my words. 
What answer can I give my older sister 
when I open the door, welcome her into my house, 
and she hands me the incriminating letter 

while I imagine opening a letter 
after scouring the sink, dusting a loaf with flour, 
that tells me my house no longer is my house. 
Beyond the window and my field of vision 
my son is shouting something to his sister—
and it's hard, all at once, to make out their words. 

But in my yellow kitchen these are only words 
I never learned to sound out in the letters 
of my sister's language, language that is sister 
to mine. I watched her flame and flower 
as boys threw stones—spliced shots on television, 
and felt the leaning walls of my bright house. 

In that threatened house, at a loss for words 
my letter would be subject to revision, 
flow or gutter, never reach my sister.