Poem in which I try to understand Hajar’s submission

Here, I plant jasmine. 

If only to heal the injury of your absence. 

This plant, this pot. Salient soil kissing the seed. I am trying. To blossom if only I could know by what lexicon I should water you. Us. On Friday mornings I think of your story. 

Such a helical thing. Your migration. A stem wrapping itself around my tongue. My insistence at pricking a thorn. 

To understand your journey’s recursive struggle. Seven times marking the hills, only to take you back to the beginning. And so I grow jasmine. In ambivalence. In apology. 

I pack the soil, cold against my palm. 

I am trying to seed you but I keep getting distracted. 

The fragrance. It softens the air around me.