dear god

this poem is written in epistolary form, from this little girl, to her Creator, on her love for her grandpa.

dear god,

I hope you will 	let my grandpa live
eons and ages
I hope that		when you take him 
that you will take me right after	give me 
a bit more time     so that I 
can hold him                as he goes

when the time is right
age him 	slowly
let the wrinkles turn to 	faded lines but 
only                          when I am there

dear god, 
the dead live 	    within me
here lies 	a pile of bodies. we
are          a cemetery in a weathered
twenty-four-year-old body 
she is 		a child
stunted growth in the arms and legs
as her mouth grew 	fonder. gulping
air in loud sips with
this 		will to live but in 
faint split second intervals only
she lives on	in the cemetery
tending to the skeletons
of our past		this body is where
they come to die 	  we
bury them in her skull		she counts the days      she 
is always			counting the days
for when her loved ones will	
return to you

she lives on in the cemetery

dear god,
give my grandpa
a ghost of a hand 	in his palm
if I am absent		(don’t let me be absent)
let him 	age but distract
him with 	the joys in watching
his plants grow and his grandchildren 
flourish. show him
that he made 
all the right decisions
when he gave my mother’s hand
to a man that took her
across the world to 
safety. show him—that 
leaving his gardens in a home
where the world
only knew him 
to be an honorable man
who tends to this earth
soil lining his palms
show him—
that he made the right decisions.

dear god,

she is 			always scared
the bodies pile 	on top of one another
you can
never tell who will leave first
she 		can’t handle another
time is—
fast         you put us here 
               and we love
               and the love is big
               it’s bigger than us
               and the time flies and 
               they return
               back to you
               and we — become the
cemeteries
of all the people		we love. and all 
I ask
is that you don’t add me 
to the cemeteries that live within
               my grandpa
               because he
               can’t take 
               another body 		again

and my grandpa	I think
mourns the man 	he was
and the life 	he lived
and the gardens 	he grew
in a land
where he was only a man
and now — he		watches his grandchildren 
flourish	and hopes that 
despite his grief
that it was all                worth it 

dear god
when you take him
take him when he knows
that it was.

My grandfather, his younger brother, and his sister, on the way to our grape gardens on our trip to Afghanistan in August of 2024.