"Broccoli" by Lory Bedikian

Broccoli

Now that the damage has been done
with all your belongings boxed

as if they too wait for transformation
father’s suits, those little empty men

your lifetime of jewelry fingerless,
your eyes shrinking into a dark starlight

one that doesn’t get better with a change
of weather, now that you’ve lost it all

and dependence is entirely left on the body
the lungs full of unsaid bitterness, mold

the poor structure falters with each slippered
step, how is it that I have the audacity

to bring you broccoli, something you say
you never ate in Aleppo, so you don’t

have a taste for it, that small green tree
barely steamed, barely a tree, more like small

stubbornness in the form of vegetable,
its stalk of vitamin and two thousand years,

its powers something you almost despise
until I tell you it will help. Help. Help you

never received enough of when he left
to join the sick of the world, those who wed

hospital beds, wilt so slowly it's almost evil,
a song that does not stop playing its deep

minor refrain, help you should have seen
in the shape of a new home, instead

of losing the one you had, now dreams
of wild boars and rifles. Just look, I say

the toasted sesame oil is divine, good,
will make it edible, the soy sauce, made

of beans that they haven’t cloned,
all of it confettied with peanuts,

almond slivers, oh mother, I can’t save you.
Even momentarily, I can’t send you back

to the humid rooftops of Aleppo, where
the stories have no middle or ending, just

the preface of that’s what we did, that’s
where we slept when the nights sweltered.

You’ve kept your stories from me and that’s
all I wanted. Now I have to tell my own.

Tell them though it won’t get us what we need
the cash of the dented world, the easy life,

the money I’ve always cursed, the wealth
of those who should have shared it, even though

that golden ticket is trash now. Money won’t save
even them when it’s time. Let’s tell them about it.

Sometimes we laugh. I tell you how many idiots
we’ve known. And yet we’ve survived.

In my imagination I’m still building you a cottage,
though I almost hated you once, said what kind

of woman treats her daughter like that. Broccoli
is sympathy. It says that despite all the poison

of the world, consume me. Bite this green belief,
better than a leaf of lettuce, better than bread

grind it between the teeth that should have bitten
hands of those who served it to you, the nerve

to want to make things better, although the house
is gone, your husband has joined your dark starlight,

you walk the halls thinking I don’t want this
cane, this is not the way I wanted to go.

Photo Credit: Staff