There’s dough in my hair, flour on my fingers.

Lick them clean. These fingers. I’m leaving.

Kiss me clean. Obscene what this finger stirs

in you. All day long you’ve seen me making

flat bread. Lavash. Song of cracked wheat. Fable

of dough rolled flat, slapped against the Tonir’s

brick wall. The dead’s flat food and what the skull

won’t eat I will. Breathe in all these odors.

Simple smells at night fall imbued with grief.

When you make bread, you make me; when you roll

dough flat you touch me. I’m leaving; come clean

me one last time. My lips, my flesh, this brief

hint at soul. I’ll be ghostly so soon. Soul,

love me like this: obscene, obscene, obscene.

notes:

Lavash is a popular flat bread in Armenia. Tonir is a stone oven used to cook the bread, similar to an Indian Tandoor.