Cover artwork by Nicole Burmeister via The Hye-Phen Artist Database
s’pas over time
i remove the minty leaves
from the frail stem of dried thyme
this one occasion when i am taking the time
to really feel the days it took
for the plant to grow,
and the hands that picked it.
i see them veiny wheat-colored
extensions of a wise woman,
maybe someone’s grandmother
through the sweet and spicy fragrance
of a grass and medicine-full land i miss
and you, in your new country
and the crooked distance
we traveled together mother
and daughter.
i ask you questions about s’pas
in my mind, about whether it’s fresh
parsley or coriander you would use as garnish,
in my small square studio
apartment alone, and it’s winter
and i remember you in the balcony
taking frozen clothes off the laundry line
and the smoky scent
and the cold of your hands
checking for warmth
on my forehead.
this is a heartbreak beyond what any two lovers
have ever gone through.
the freedom you blame for how i turned out
queer and wrong and shameful,
has also swallowed all my senses of belonging.
now when i make dolma
based on the ingredients of an ex-lover’s
egyptian gradmother’s recipe,
and buy greek yogurt in the supermarket,
and wonder if this lavash was made by kurdish people,
and whether it’s right to put onions in harisa,
i don’t know anymore if what you cooked
for us when i was younger
and what i ate
was rooted in any reality
about who we are as a people.
we have grown accustomed to calling matsun
yogurt, and love
a duty we must perform
for a nation. and it’s not food anymore we eat
in our adopted western countries, but fear
of dying out, finally
as it was planned a century ago.
but i am still alive
and still your daughter
and i want to survive.