What kind of world will we leave
__________for our mothers? My mother
calls me, weeping. I am
__________far and the country she gave
me could kill me. Or
__________that’s what she’s saying, her voice
clumsy with tears—my mother
__________who never cries, and so
for this, too, apologizes. Sometimes, more
__________often, I want to mother
my mother. I’ve begun to
__________wonder what it is like for her
to have four hearts
__________outside her body, buried
in brown and fragile skin. I never wanted this
__________for my children, my mother sobs
from a Michigan town
__________where once men crowded in white
cloaks, their sons still
__________there lingering at drug stores and gas pumps
with steely guns and colder eyes.
__________What do you tell a mother
you love too much
__________to lie to? My mother
named me Leila because it was a song
__________white men played on air guitars, which meant,
she’d hoped, they couldn’t hate me. I’m so scared now
__________for Rachid, even with his blonde hair—
My mother thought her blood
__________might protect us in this country
from this country, her fair genes and castaside
__________Catholic god. Thinks now
she failed us as children because she only ever told us
__________stories of monsters
we wouldn’t recognize. Mother,
__________I know these men
could be your brothers
__________and do not blame you. She weeps.
I am far and the country
__________monstrous. What kind of world
do we mother, knowing
__________what it is, what it’s capable of?
The long night stretches
__________between her window and mine.
As if comforting a child, I say the word
__________kind—as in, the world is still
kinder than we think. I think
__________I believe it. Mom I say
stop crying—no one’s leaving this world
__________to anyone yet.