Day 1,121

Bring me a sunflower
your grandmother said to you
shortly before she died. There
in the tent, in the rainy encampment,
rivulets of sewage and rainwater
flowing past where she lay,
sick, unable to walk, in her final
days. Bring me a sunflower
she repeated, as though
you were living again
in the house by the fields in Khan Younis
where she and your grandfather,
all their lives, grew strawberries,
oranges, dates, grapes. A sunflower:
bright like the sun. Like
daylight after a tortured
night. A countenance
that would smile on her. A
remembered embrace. A
kind of paradise. Its tall
stem, its petals
revolving around a center
composed of thousands of tiny
single flowers. A world
of flowers, a world
like the world she’d
lost. A flowered world
she could lose herself in,
lose her dying in, forget
for a moment the bombs,
the drones, the starvation.
Bring me a sunflower:
as though she had no other
language remaining. No other desire.