“Now I embroider flowers in dim colors in my new country of flowers, clumsy stitches through the stencil of an orchid, remembering my young mouth pressed to a flute, unable to release the breath. I’d like that he was a musician, fingers long as spring onions.”

Safia Elhillo uses her poetry in this volume to explore Muslim girlhood and shame, and the violence against women’s bodies. She then creates a world of magical realism where women escape stoning because birds carry the rocks away, slain girls grow into two, women are deemed holy and protected in the world she
creates.