You ask me what life is like here now and I don’t know what to tell you except that
today I taught my son how to make za’atar toast, not as some sweet
passing down of the sacred – I’m just sick of doing it for him. I wonder when
I can stop doing all of this holding. Crates of soil and tenderness
and there is only before and after. On the metro, I sat elbow-to-elbow with new
wanting. She was sitting, he was standing, and she offered that he sit
on her lap. I dream of words, of piecing them together, of how they sometimes
don’t match the world. I dream of their music. I zigzagged
across Northern Avenue to avoid the old woman hawking flowers. It’s the day of love,
she threatened, buy some. In bed, I listened to my mother list the minutiae
of care for my father. I balanced the rectangle of her face on my knee and twirled
and twirled her heart-shaped ring that I wear on my index finger.
Nyree Abrahamian
Nyree Abrahamian is a writer and educator based in Yerevan. Her work is published or forthcoming in Mizna and Poetry Northwest. She produces Country of Dust, a narrative podcast about life in a changing Armenia, and is creative director of the Tumanyan International Storytelling Festival. Nyree is a 2023 Creative Armenia Fellow.