A chin tattooed, green, with the flower inks The dangled gold coins on the forehead Your grandfather gave those to me when we got married I was still a babe then Needlepoint on blankets sown and stored on cabinet tops Ground henna, darkened red with steeped tea leaves Henna shouldn’t be orange like the midday sun It should be the red earth of the valley or the setting of the sun when prayer is called We vend when the sun bends, and rise when the moon calls Where are the olive trees that we would go and pick with sisters and nieces up beyond the sanasil from atop the highest hill in the town, where the lookout, the razor-top fence, was built They would watch us pick, but we would sing anyway To the valley, beautiful and princely, your bridegroom is To the Quds gate, we seek to travel today Protected by god, protected by god When the olive oil would come, the town men would sigh and the families would drench torn bread in it, hungry for the earth, as if we hadn’t eaten for centuries It tasted bitter like the thorns beneath the watch tower pressed, and then alive once more. on the glistening bodies of newborns and in the braids of the Hajjat and in the metal cubes sent westward on the backs of the birds who have flown away from the valley, from the gates of the Quds.