My grandmother made rosewater every May in Shiraz.
Copper pot, a cloth over the lid, the whole house pink with it.
She put it on our wrists for weddings,
on our foreheads when we had fever,
on the dead.
Everything that mattered, she said, smells of roses.
So this is not a small thing I'm doing.
Give me your hands.
Palms up. No — up.
The bottle's cold from the fridge and you flinch
and I like it, I like that you flinch,
I like knowing exactly where the cold goes
and how long it takes your skin to forgive it.
A drop on each wrist. On the pulse.
Then my thumbs, pressing it in,
the way she pressed it into mine
the night before my sister married.
Then the inside of the elbow. The throat.
Here, below the ear, where you smell most like yourself
and now a little like her garden,
a little like a country neither of us can go back to.
You're very quiet.
Your eyes are closed.
The candles are doing their small work against the dark,
the air conditioning hums like a prayer nobody is listening to,
and Dubai is out there glittering
at twenty storeys,
and in here, at this one low table,
it's May in Shiraz,
and everything that matters
smells of roses.
I put the bottle down.
I put my mouth where the rosewater is.
She'd forgive me. She was young once too.
