Abram and Nahor took wives; the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai.
Genesis 11:29 NRSV
I pluck a date (plump as the drops of rain that surprise
the skin on the back of my neck at the start of the wet season)
from a copper bowl, twin of the fruit that (mere hours before) taught me
the taste of delight—as when my eyes lift from platters laden with hump-backed
olives and warm loaves and catch the sun-flash of the tent flap
opening and a ziggurat of shadow rising in the wedge of empty space, and I blink
and see you: one star caught in each eye’s moonless sky, releasing
a flock of silver birds inside my heart, lifting still, now,
as I hold the sweetness between my teeth, test it
with my tongue, one long moment,
before the bite.