The solid bread on
the warm wooden table
under the neon sun
that lights your kitchen
a gray strand of hair on
the just-wiped tiled floor
and the Muezzin calls
from the patio window.
It is the dusk of our lives.
The mechanical voice
of the TV announcer
declares
yet another battle.
Still, the scent of ablution
from your palms
pacify
my corrugated brow.
You kneel
and the sustenance
of forever compassion
is your promise
as you talk to God.
Your kitchen is not our memory anymore, Mama.
The original
has found a resting place
of scorched stone
in Hai Al Jamiaa.
Here in Amman,
you cannot uphold the walls
of a home
that can gather
the peace
we once breathed
when the world acknowledged
us
as humans!
Your trying fingers
cannot knead
any more flakes
of make-shift safety
into our Khubuz, Mama...
It will not rise.
It has not risen in 13 years...
Nor can you raise a sanctuary
from within the darkness
of foreign sands
that rage
with our very presence.
You love on.
It is all you know.
You will love on
so we can live on.
And all the broken bread, Mama
all the cracked neon sunlight
and burned wooden tables
cannot bring back
what you want more than life for us...
our land
with your very own kitchen.
