"Where Water Touches Land" by Heather M. O'Brien
For all its scarred chaos, crammed slums, the death trap of Sabra and Shatila, Beirut
was beautiful: by night, clusters of amber bracelets, yellow diamond necklaces;
by day, a jumble of honeycombs, its bisque balconies, dun-gold apartments,
climbing the hills in sun-warmed hives I wanted to sink my teeth into,
my mouth a cradle for their bees. On the corniche, the black sea glittering
beyond the balustrades, I thought the city’s architects, as nowhere else,
had understood something about us ‒ our human proportions, desire
for shifting symmetry, plant-like thirst for light. In Beirut,
had given us
