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Purrsia

(A Chronicle Corollary)

They call me Purrsia —
half Yehud by my mother’s psalms,
half Persian by my father’s seal.
I walk the corridor not as a subject,
nor as a conqueror,
but as a shadow between the two.

In the markets of Tyre
I speak in the tongue of tribute,
but in the courtyards of Susa
I purr the language of decree.
My hands smell of cedar and myrrh,
my wrists bear the ink of both laws.

I have seen Croesus fall in the eyes of old men,
and Cyrus rise in the banners of the young.
I have carried letters sealed with the lion of Persia
and prayers folded in the script of Jerusalem.

The Levant is a narrow throat,
but I am the cat that slips through it —
silent, certain,
bearing the breath of two worlds.  

When the hoofbeats drive their drumbeats south,
I listen for the spaces between them,
for the pause where a name can change its shape
and still be true.

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