for my grandmother

The oranges come in little red bags, like Christmas, like comfort, like a country, burning, like the bags a woman carries her country in, and in my brother’s hands is an orange, bursting, and in a soldier’s hands is a woman, opening, and the bags promise that the oranges are seedless, that they are soft, and clean, and dead, and all I can think of is how you told me that after the war, when the men were done with the women, they’d collect their bodies in fields of bags, bulging, ripening, ready—for what are bones if not seeds waiting to be planted, what are bodies if not secrets promised, what is war if not a waiting harvest—and O sweet mother, you watch me and my brother eat, you watch our soft untouched bodies, and we will grow strong, we will forget, and you will remain, remembering—before you, your husband is prostrate in prayer, his body ablaze, and he looks to you, a country in his eyes, his arms reaching, his hands two oranges—