"Miss Sahar Listens to Fairuz Sing 'Take Me'" by Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Miss Sahar Listens to Fairuz Sing “Take Me”
طقو س الانتظار
Take me to a house with no doors,
a country of windows facing the shore.
Let the wind carry us, Habibi,
leave me there on the balcony of the sea.
A country of windows facing the shore,
a neighborly moon casting its silver veil over us.
Leave me there on the balcony of the sea,
Habibi, and you are the language I’ve lost.
A neighborly moon casting its silver veil over us
and I’ll sew a wedding gown of its light,
Habibi, and you are the language I’ve lost.
Together we’ll live in the kingdom of forgetting.
I’ll sew a wedding gown of its light.
The waves will drown our voices,
and together we’ll live in the kingdom of forgetting,
the night sky a shawl of stars for our shoulders.
The waves will drown our voices.
Take me to a house with no doors,
let the wind carry us, Habibi,
and together we’ll live in the kingdom of forgetting.
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha
Lena Khalaf Tuffaha is poet, essayist, and translator. Her first book, Water & Salt (Red Hen Press), won the 2018 Washington State Book Award. Her chapbook, Arab in Newsland, won the 2016 Two Sylvias Press Prize. Her work has been published in journals that include Alaska Quarterly Review, Barrow Street, Kenyon Review Online, Michigan Quarterly Review, New England Review, Poetry Northwest, and the Academy of American Poets “Poem-A-Day” feature. She holds an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. She lives in Redmond, Washington.
Headshot: Houssam Mcheimich
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