Sign of the Divine
For Ayat Firwana.
I was unfamiliar with the name
Ayat. I suppose I have always felt
unacquainted with any sign of the divine.
Some say it is an octagon,
a red reminder to cease
or pause. Some, the hexagonal
harmony that communally toils to cure
honey. Others think
a triangle: the way, when purple,
it can replace a mother
reading to her son on the windowsill.
Nature favors triangles, supposedly,
as do art and relationships. Just think of the space
between you and your spouse
filled by a mother-in-law or a child.
Some say a circle, because it reflects
life—that healing is more like wrestling a spiral
staircase than walking a tightrope, that nothing is
linear: not communication,
nor our heartbeats.
I admit, for me, it is the steady flow of green
lights when running late. But surely, God
is more than small favors. Maybe it is
the stranger who smiles when you have
an envelope in hand; the mysterious call of sexy
piano keys to a canary. I think it likely to be
an angelic beau sent to the steadfast, French girl,
the one who rescues her prince, leads him
to victory and a crown before burning
in phoenix fire. Perhaps it is the good book
you finished in the wee hours, curled up in bed,
a sleeping and slightly snoring husband
at peace beside you. Might be the tears that fork
on your cheek as you think, “Yes, Virginia!
Yes, Vonnegut! Yes, Rita,
sweet dove.” There are days I wonder if
I have ever seen one. Days when
it truly seems I am the only
one who has gathered loose shoe straps
to string bunny ears in a knot. Then
I see the baby called Ayat.
And I think
maybe we create them,
arm-deep in clay in the small
moments of morning, coming
together—in love of sweet sweat,
the delicious breeze of hot breath
on chill necks, our tingling bodies,
and this good life.
Perhaps we unearth them
when we donate galaxies,
our histories wrapped in atoms,
to fertile soil? And then we watch
them shoot into wriggling hope—a sign
of something, surely.
Might be we consecrate
with convulsions, with synced
pulses and sleepless nights;
by surrendering our fabricated
sense of order, with bloody cramps,
with wails and rhythmic throes, with
questions about the overlap
amidst fear and love.
What if we must sacrifice for them,
not virgins on pyres or birds in temples
but ourselves: our smooth skin,
the sole presence of our DNA
in our brains, our time ticking,
and our small kernels of certainty in want
of some sign of the divine?
And they named her Ayat. She lived
for seventeen days: incarnation,
and then incarnadine.
Ayat Firwana was born in the fall of 2023 in Gaza. Tragically, she and the rest of her family were murdered by an Israeli airstrike on October 15th, 2023, 17 days after she was born.