a garden blooms everytime I look at you

A Poetic Conversation with Hala Alyan and Fariha Róisín

I'm notoriously terrible at endings.

My friend recently said of me, Hala likes to keep doors ajar.

That's what I want to do here: to keep this door ajar, to keep the world that we have been co-creating (you and I, Fariha, but also everyone who has been reading) a possible continuation, somewhere we can return to for shelter. I have felt community and love so keenly in your words in what has been a bleak month. I'm grateful for what we've made here. I'm grateful for the home your poems have given me.

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a garden blooms everytime I look at you

After Fariha

They called it a life:

the country we left, the one we returned to,

the man waiting at the end of the aisle,

the taxi line outside JFK.

I go to an island and eat expired mushrooms.

I walk along the water until I can't find my father's name anymore.

Remind me. Who was I meant to become?

What are we to remember of this summer?

Hot green, American ennui, the meme of an almost-president.

Beirut, Tehran, Gaza.

Immi, immi, immi.

All year I don’t write a poem.

All year I write the same poem.

Hind in the tree. Hind in the airport. Hind on the L train.

Who am I to speak your name?

I am one of ten million.

I am a headline of selfies.

Prayer emoji. Fruit emoji. Side eye emoji.

Tomorrow they will find a sexy new planet.

Tomorrow they will bomb your city to the shoreline.

I keep having a dream:

My mother’s lions circling a courtyard.

Birds of paradise everywhere.

Whatever you call a life becomes one.

Is there anything more American?

To curse a hummingbird its short life.

To use pyrite in the model house.

To make honeysuckle out of a man.

The worshippers kneel next to a gutted mosque,

the blue minaret a quiet head. I forgive nothing.

I look at the wrong things: movie showtimes, kites like pelicans.

Oh, this again. My self? Just litter. A moon of Styrofoam

on a beach. Do you believe in love,

a bird asks a mirror in my dream.

I believe in accountability, the mirror says.

The bird pecks herself.

The bird shakes her golden hair.

The bird has my barking laugh, turquoise wings, American eyes.