This poem has three voices.

One you will hear clearly.

One you will see crossed out.

One you will have to look for.

It becomes easier to find

the more times you return.

Before

My father stood in the courtyard at prayer
and his shadow reached the foot of the mountain.
I held my face up to the snow
and it tasted sweet.

---

This is where I am from.
This is the size I was.

Tehran — her own house

I ran my fingers along the border where the gold thread turns.
A stranger lifted the fringe before I could reach it.
The floor it left behind was the same floor.
I had not noticed before how cold.

this was my mother's hands before it was mine warm. she was warm. the wool held her longer than i did.

Sister's house — Tehran

I learned the sounds of this house before it learned me.
At night his footsteps stopped outside my door.
In the morning I found my handbag moved,
my pockets lighter by nothing at all.

I have never in my life taken what was not given the door. the finger. the door. i counted what was still mine.

Paris — Massoud's apartment

On the third day they moved me to the corner of the living room.
I rolled the mattress up each morning and stowed it under the sofa.
My grandchildren's faces at breakfast held a silence.
I did not know how to be smaller than I already was.

you were small once too and I held all of you in the night the weight on my chest had their faces. i could not tell guilt from love. i still cannot.

London — Maggie's apartment

She held my face in both hands at the door.
That night I gave her the bracelet, the ruby earrings,
the last things that had travelled the whole way with me.
She wept. She took them.

I would have given you everything — I already have she has her father's hands. i did not say this. the rubies are the same red as the carpet in the room where she was born.

London — laundromat storeroom

The room had no windows.
I set my suitcase against the wall and sat on it
and listened to the machines turning in the dark next door,
wringing and wringing the same water out.

take me. but not yet. let me see them settled first. dark. damp. and still i could feel them — paris. london. tehran — pulling at the hem of me. this is what i am made of. this is what will not let go.

Canada — Karim's house

A man was crying at the door.
I knew his face the way you know a word
you have not spoken in years —
the shape of it, without the sound.

I know you. I think I know you. don't cry. nana khanum was at the door with the tea and the candy. of course. of course she was. the snow outside was the snow from before. everything is still happening.

The plane

The seat was mine.
No one could lay claim to it.
Below me the clouds were white and clean
and I was twelve years old and forty and seventy
all at once, watching the snow
rise.

I am here. I have always been here.

warm. she was warm. the wool held her.
his hands in prayer on the mountain.
the snow tastes sweet.
i am not afraid of the silence.