The following piece was previously published in Last Leaves, Issue 4, Spring 2022
She ramrods her straight chair
by the cook stove, conjures solace
from her Armenian bible shuffling
pages back to front. She mutters,
gnarled fingers rowing across the page.
Her cotton stockings sloop into ankle bracelets,
her high heeled lace up shoes clunk
back and forth across scrubbed linoleum,
her bib apron wheedles onions
from a bushel basket cache in the cold storage room.
Her brown hands tuck grape leaves around rice,
tear damp lavash into pieces,
pry up the stove lid, push in kindling sticks.
Garlic, olive oil, mint perfume her whiskers
hijacked in oily brown wrinkles,
they scratch my cheeks.
She knows no English, I no Armenian.
My ears tune the soft guttering
as she speaks with my father.
I whisper behind my hand
scubbity, scubbity, scubbity.
Memories ghost September sunlight,
slant through blinds. Stories never told
collide in the parlor, migrate
behind the curio cabinet glass door,
colonize her mementos with their silence.
Her voice roosts inside me somewhere,
pricks my skin,
a straight pin lost in my skirt hem.
I beseech her story stone to speak,
like those who suck stones in the desert
thirsty for more.
