Some nights my bones wake me and ask Noor, where are you from?
which country? I tell them to sleep, to dream of my father’s country
 
whose name no longer exists on a map. When I wake the next morning
an olive tree is growing on my father’s tongue. He whispers, in my country
 
there are checkpoints now, there are birds that leave the bodies
of small children. I protest their stolen country
 
and wrap a keffiyeh around my neck. When he sees me, he smiles despite himself,
hums Umm Kulthum, and I watch his eyeballs shrink like the disappearance of a country.
 
I come from the land of figs, and when I watch my father’s teeth sink into its juicy insides,
I think about how a fig is an inverted flower, how my country is inside out, yet still
my country.