I will embrace the wheat stalk
Before it leaves me
And becomes a loaf of bread
I will stand to bid it farewell
Holding my sickle and a date
I will cut the loaf of bread
So every child of mine may eat from it
Wheat stalk
I will blend rose bottles with wheat
Adorn them with an olive branch
Water them with its oil
Then I heard an elder say
If you cannot gift oil to light his lamp
What if it was a rose
Whose scent was like a damask
Like wheat
And its touch like oil?Then I will write on a quince or a tamarind tree
Gifts from my children’s ears of wheat
And the scent of my mother’s oud
That I…
I will write
And a crown of damask in oil
That without my child I would never have known
The meaning of a loaf of bread
