Infinity Ghazal Beginning with Lice and Never Ending with Lies

Lice? My aunt once drew a comb through my hair steady;

she wouldn’t let what feeds on blood eat my inner tree.

Where now is the word for such intimacy? I know it still,

but all I see are jungles burnt of our rarest trees.

My point is: it takes a while to say, “I am a fire hazard,” or,

“a household of rare birds” is another way to say tree.

I wrote one draft of this poem, then she died. Will I

forget her name, Hasna Henna? Let’s smell a tree;

night-blooming jasmine, o-so-heavenly! A sapling

succeeds by flourishing from a tree’s seed.

How else to perfume these needs we breathe? A sapling

of course = a small and soft tree (i.e. baby tree).

I grieve the rice she fed me off a palm leaf.

Only now can I fully marvel: how finely formed is a tree!

Someone I loved said to stop with the oceans in my poems — 

well, oceans + oceans + oceans! We drown so many trees.

(Night blooming tree = baby tree = once and future tree.)

Lately, all I think about are trees.

Read this again to replace tree with refugee.

Tarfia = joy in the margins + one who lies to protect trees.