MEHRNOOSH TORBATNEJAD

Because Just in Case

It was what I heard the adults say growing up, as a suffix,
often, to a sequence of praise terms about another,
khoda hefzesh koneh, or, may God protect him,
a pleading saved for discussion of the exquisite
or the exceptionally plain,
so long as the recipient of this purest well wish
tangled the speaker’s breath,
a verbal yearning that confused me for years,
since the Farsi word for protect and memorize is the same,
and I wondered why God needed this reminding,
why Iranians thought it necessary to advise
the creator of memory to remember anything,
the same phrase that reentered my thoughts
when I went to wake him for his meeting,
before he yawned good morning
his eyelids rose with the same eager speed
of a lift cord raising blinds, at the same time
his mouth divided into lips that parted like clouds
to reveal the silent beam of his tired smile,
and I wondered why I ever glanced
at a window for daytime, to a sky for sunlight,
so extraordinary and ordinary,
I couldn’t trust myself to remember it,
and I wouldn’t even if I could,
each split second of this second becoming past
by virtue of my witness; memory by definition
is just something that no longer is,
and why would I store the magic of this
in the space of anything that is not the present,
it was why I did not softly scrub my palms
against the stubble of his cheeks, and instead, 
cupped God’s chin, turned it to him,
make sure You get this