My grandmother was a mother

before she was a woman.

In Nasiriyah’s forest of mothers,

she was a seedling with blonde hair

and five children.

Grief was a plague

in the exodus of our ancestors,

grief is a vine, tinged yellow,

that grows on the gate of a synagogue

in Basra.

Through a window of the synagogue,

her hand pressed

against the fogged glass,

my grandmother mouths the words

to a story which I do not understand.

And outside, I am shaded by full grown willow trees

that speak Arabic and shake with laughter.