Maya
by Rewa Zeinati-Choueiri
She eats
as though starving—chicken, dolmata,
the buttery flakes of filo—
and what’s killing her eats, too.
from Kim Addonizio’s Eating Together
Before my friend bought her first pink wig
She listened to another song by Dolly Parton
And played Scarlet’s Walk until the phone rang.
Before she wore a silk scarf over her bare head
She watched Muriel’s Wedding for the seventeenth
Time and wrote stories for the children of Palestine.
Before my friend’s thick auburn hair fell in waves
To the floor she sat in her blue kitchen till morning,
Carved pumpkins and wrote long letters
That carried her laugh inside them like a secret
Full of open drawers.
Before my friend knew she was leaving
She flew back home for good and left me
Her songs, like petals of carnation unfolding,
The way raisins swell under the chill of my tongue.
