To the Lost Flowers of Minab
— for the 160 young girls killed at the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ school in Iran
Here is the beeswax candle
you took turns blowing out at bedtime.
Here is the faded blue quilt,
stitched in your family a century ago,
the quilt your sister and you curled beneath each night,
your bodies, a warm treble clef of skinny limbs.
Here are blessed milk thistle and the cherished lily.
Here are roasted aubergine, pomegranates,
and the crispy rice that stuck to the bottom of the pot.
Here are marbles, a jump rope, your favorite doll.
And here, your strictest teacher and the poetry
you learned to recite.
Swinging in the park with your best friend,
sorrow of returning home at sunset.
Scarlet orchids and white hyacinth.
A setar perched on your thigh,
the way one finger coaxed music from the instrument
as your mother listened from across the hall.
Here are pink damask roses, your shattered childhood,
your whole future returned to you—
quiet mornings of old age,
and the long, long river of memory.
*
Valentina Gnup’s poetry collection, Ruined Music, was published by Grayson Books in 2024. In 2023 she won the Tucson Festival of Books Literary Award for Poetry and second place in the Yeats Prize for poetry. In 2019, she won the Lascaux Prize in Poetry; in 2017, she won the Ekphrastic Challenge from Rattle; and in 2015, she won the Rattle Reader’s Choice Award. She lives in Mill Valley, California. Visit at valentinagnup.com
