God paints us in sorrow,
us broken little things—

impotent pomegranate seeds splayed
beneath his feet, our foreheads pressed
to the ground in submission.

Our faith litters the heavens, unopened letters shifting
in the vast emptiness. Only our agony
lives in the clouds.

We salivate for salivation,
unable to swallow our tongues
and eat this silence any longer.

“Allah Akbar,

O (g)iver (o)f (d)ivinity,
O granter of dignity,

what name
to besiege you with:
gore or desolation?

Your eyes resemble two mouths,
wet with saliva and wide open—
two event horizons devouring countless prayers
‘til only darkness remains

Maybe the dying only speak a dead language.
Our pleas are but maggots crawling into all the wrong places,
forming displaced annotations in the footnotes of history.

Our bodies linger beneath the earth
while our voiceless souls burn
as kindling for Jahannam.