Ghazal for Staying Safe

which is to say we prosper until we are not safe,

all of this, worth it even when we are not safe.

I ask where you are going, what roads bend aside

for this worn body; you say “where we are not safe.”

the future looks so familiar against your skin, it seeks 

comfort nestled in the moonlight of this shot, safe.

I brace for the bullet when you tell me that

the past is closer than the future, yet still not safe.

I forget how to translate words back to you,

like a promise, like a threat, I forgot ‘safe’.

instead I say “it is easy to love the thing that

returns home, staying, staying”, not safe.

but good things don’t stay, don’t return: they make

new homes, rapidly built and wrought safe.

the world is over when anyone dies young, but I 

remember why we remain, burning, not safe—

munira, someday you will love until you are free,

a martyr for all the things you could not save.