Rooftop

I die at dusk every day
on a rooftop in a city with no name
daughters unborn to me mourn
in bruised nights’ wombs
voices I do not recognize
utter prayers to deaf trees
shaking my limbs off their leaves

a city breathing heavy with its sins
buries me in its alleys
smell of jasmine and urine on its walls
where once I cut a vein and emptied
time’s venom under blinking neon lights

there’s no distance to my pain

I’m born at dawn every day
in a sac of daylight
with an appetite to eat moments in slow bites
roll them on a dry tongue
linger on the sweet and bitter
oozing from each tick tock shortening my life

I can’t remember where I loved you in between

it is dusk again,
I look for the rooftop
I hung my fresh laundry on

– Silva Zanoyan Merjanian

© 2014, poem, Silva Zanoyan Merjanian, All right reserve; poem is excepted from “Rumor,” Silva’s second poetry collection.  Both Silva and publisher, Cold River Press, are donating all profits from the sale of this book to Syrian-Armenian Relief Fund