My mother my father the
water on tap healing the
glass jar of last night’s
pasta sauce that I didn’t
eat the little red orange
lines rimming it rubbing it stilling it
I back turn back
imagine back dare and pray Think of this pasta dish
by the sink unwashed but watered
like a persian goldfish vase
the bowl so boring that one
could kill it.
My mother my father crunching backs raising hibernating and
hunching to through america only to have a
kid who won’t eat
it
I guess it isn’t that bad black coffee
and tar there are worse things
the water down my throat is
too hot my eyebags are oozing
My dad tells me, through this
empty dish, that
he does not regret
his journey to america
my mom sometimes says
that things were easier
in iran
Sick, chills rushing through my body as if god,
She’s watching me, stepping into rooms Shouldn’t have gone in.
I must’ve loved too strong–The coffee near me is my only sense of warmth.
Heartbroken,
blown out
of my nose.
Nadia Farjami is a poet whose been published in The New York Times, The Athena Review, The Daily Californian, The Berkeley Fiction Review, and honored in dozens of more poetic palaces!