i used to associate iran with death
since we only went back for funerals.
i thought the tinsel altars around the capital city
were for some summertime festival,
not memorials for dead young men.
my mom never corrected me. instead, she bought me smarties,
which for some reason was what my cousins called m&ms.
she said, “i should have taught you more than bandaging
the blue, about the ache of roses and how to thread milk.”
my siblings thought this was more of her nonsense,
not unlike the diatribes when we hid from my father
during one of his abusive tirades
(sometimes waving a costco knife
he hid in a pahlavi brocade)
but it was those times my mom made the most sense to me.
we left tehran for the u.s. when the iran-iraq war,
as my mom put it, “shattered all our mirrors.”
an air raid broke all the antique ones
her father collected from tabriz bazaars;
novelties made to look like reza shah’s;
even the unlicensed minnie mouse compact
in my cradle (probably my first gay icon).
henceforth my mother would say
upon catching me staring into a mirror:
“it’s a curse to look for too long.”
i’d respond, “don’t worry. i’m unlooking.”
with this she knew she taught me well
the melancholy of oranges, how to eat mirrors,
and to make stairwells into lovers.
better to be with one you can climb or descend.
