She dreams in tongues. Words I haven't for the rich billow
of green and garnet robes splayed around her. Drunk
on the serpent's fond kiss, she feigns blindness,
 
pretends to be mute and deaf—inanimate, really. But I'm familiar
with the scrutiny of strangers, the kind she will never admit
she yearns for. Eyes tracing the tender curve of her breasts,
 
the waxen sheen of her arm, the concealed navel.
Long after the pyramids have crumbled and the great peninsula
spliced by a sliver of water, we will still think of her lovely
 
face, birthing maps in placid slumber: marble obelisks
carved from her cheeks, and the flesh of her lips
swapped for dunes stretching across Cairo's peripheries.
 
Speak up, darling, loud and clear. Is that a smile she's failing
to bury? Just the slightest hint of satisfaction, warm as venom
in her veins, the future grown soft in the folds of her palms.