One summer my brother and I
picked every leaf off the lemon tree.
We washed our hands in the leaves,
dunked our heads in them, danced
in their fragrance till sunset.
When our father came home that night,
he was upset with us. He told us this tree
would not survive—we had killed it.
And we cried, our faces in our small
brown hands that reeked of blood.
When Muhammad was a child,
the angels came for him. Jibra’il
opened his chest and took his heart,
cleaned it in divine light, removed
every dark imperfection, and returned it.
The angels aren’t coming for us—
I just wanted to tell you what happened.
Monks spend their whole lives waiting
for revelations that never come,
or maybe they just never tell anyone.
