at the gates of Daburiya
the woman

with my eyes.
She has my hair—
so black I'm taken back

to the bombed out bus
I passed in Afula,
kilometers away.

I’m dressed in tight jeans,
snug tank. She offers
a brightly colored tunic

two times too big.
I lower my head
and slip into it.

Fahimi brings me
to the rooftop
to meet her mother,

veiled, her caftan snapping
in the wind. She’s toothless,
old and gnarled as the olive trees

standing guard in her herb-strewn yard.
She lifts her arm, points to village
after village nestled near the neck

of Mount Tabor as she tells me,
she tells this Jew: Arabi, Arabi,
Yahud, pointing here and there

as if this land
could be parceled out
so neatly into Arab, Arab,

Jew. And Fahimi, she could be my twin
save the slightly darker tint
of her sunsoaked skin.

We cannot take our eyes off
one another. Our caftans swell
and heave in the Galileean air. We stare,

scan each others’ faces dying
to understand every last same detail
of our replicated bodies.