when were you born Ruksana
(princess of the lament)
a handful of sweet basil
would have been your name otherwise
under the veiled scents of your skin
a forehead of all the anguished
electric plights sculpted into
your cheeks bones
with every fold of skin
a valediction

you held the time once
under your nails
along your spine
nested in your eye sockets
hazed over your lids

your mother spinning wool
called you Bibi
and you father
searching for an obscured deity
forgot your vows

you hid inside
and despised domestic artifice.