Prayer Sestina
As evening falls, a man bends down to pray.
His daughter wonders what he whispers
as he kneels, leans forward, presses his forehead to the floor.
She notices the way his shoulders move forward
as he bends from the waist, and the way they move back
as he raises his head, whispering, here
but also somewhere else. When Baba prays she hears
but does not understand the words of his prayer.
She sits behind him, facing his back
and letting the words that he whispers
cascade over her. She imagines the two of them transported forward
in time, the rug lifting up off the floor
to carry them to the far-off land that he came from. She sits on the floor
now but in her mind she is no longer here.
She casts her thoughts backward to her father’s childhood, forward
to some day when the two of them will kneel together in prayer,
when she will understand the meaning of the words that he whispers,
when she will sit beside him rather than at his back.
She wonders if he will ever take her back
to that place that he came from, whether she will sit with her cousins on the floor
trying to make sense of their customs and the words that they whisper,
or if she and her father and mother and sister will remain here
forever, caught in the machinery of society, their only escape a prayer
uttered in whispers, their hopes cast forward
to a time that may never come to pass. She fast-forwards
the tape of her consciousness to her own future ending. She backs
herself into the corner of necessity and inevitability. She prays
for the wisdom of her ancestors to guide her. She casts her eyes down toward the floor,
breathes, focuses on her breath, on the here
and now, on the present moment. Her consciousness whispers
to her of dreams, desires, fears, choices while her father whispers
his prayers. She leans her head forward,
straining to make out his words, to better hear
the verses that he carries with him always, and will carry back
to his homeland, someday. He rises now from the floor,
signaling the end of his prayer.
Later, in her dark bed, she prays, praising and pleading in whispers.
She hears footsteps on the floor outside her room, pauses, leans forward
in bed to listen for her father’s familiar presence. Safe, she falls back to her pillow, assured by what she has heard.
