A cigarette bud sits
at my windscreen
creased
left napping

I can write your name
in Arabic, I know
its heavy smoke curls, its
language

if I carve
the space you left with
a cigarette I’d find
baklava and garlic

or eggplant on rye
peeping fig-trees, weighted
Davidoff Adventure lurking
pastirma or bastirma

sipping arak,
pistachio rinds cooked
in wooden mould, I’d find
a gold cross

hung around the sun
anchored on its centre
burning into its skin
drop

me to the bottom
of your thoughts to where
sandstone sings
evaporates heat

to its point
bleached like bones
from the sun, to our
first language