Retrouvaille

It swells within me. It expands without warning, without drugs, without seams. I do not question it. It pushes past the dregs of yesterday’s lapses, this morning’s regret, a lifetime of stubbornness. It fills without asking questions.

“Hal ad!” My dad’s voice filled the space above the porch table. “This big!” He cupped his large palm to indicate the unbelievable size of the sun-ripened figs he remembers. “You go to the fig garden at five-thirty in the morning, and you find this fig hal ad! heavy on the vine, leaking honey, splitting open just for you. And you take and you eat with your eyes closed, because you never have to worry about those figs having worms in them. They never do.”

The spirited elderly woman sitting beside him clapped her wizened hands, hooted her agreement, and glanced up at the white-washed terrace ceiling as if remembering more than just the sweet fruit of her homeland. The old man, her husband, scooted his chair closer to hers, nodded, and added softly, “Yes, I remember those.” I’m reminded of my heritage when I see it etched into this woman’s face, buried in this old man’s eyes, lingering behind my father’s smile and my mother’s voice.

I can’t say it aloud. I can’t break it with sound or breath. I can’t help but stand before it in awe, before myself within myself, and scale the walls of me surrounding it. Feel out the confines before it leaves.

I felt the warmth of the tree lights on my face and I drew closer, within inches of the bulbs. I spent the day alone, hanging and hammering to Ray and Lady Day.

“I’ll find you in the morning sun/and when the night is new…”

I sat back on the clean carpet. I breathed in the pine-fragrant air. I tickled the white skin on my black cat’s belly and I wrapped myself in my blue scarf, completely and sublimely at peace.

It catches in my breath. It is gentle. It does not interrupt. It yawns me awake and plucks my eyelids open, one at a time.

She reads before bed, sipping herbal tea with saffron honey. She might be composed entirely of saffron honey. Her hair curls into strands fine and stubborn, her mouth blooms, her eyes are damp earth where beautiful things grow, her nose a crooked crocus stem, and her pussy produces nectar like honey, like the combined efforts of her body and mind.

Her head lolled in the seat beside me as I drove over a pothole. Her foot curled into the crevice of the car door and her eyelashes rested on her cheek. Her little finger twitched and she inhaled herself awake.

“What’s playing? This reminds me of my grandma,” she mumbled through sleep. I sang along to the Arabic words until the resounding cello replaced them.

It almost breaks me. It burns my butter, it dries my mouth, it stunts my conversation, it tears my lungs apart with each shrapnel breath. It is relentless and I cannot be angry as hard as I try.

“She doesn’t want you there, she doesn’t want to see you,” my cousin Raya told me.

She means well. She means no harm. She glares at me with protective rage in her eyes.

“Tell them to pray for you, it will give them peace,” my uncle advised me with more love than I expected. He held my hands in his own, promised he would help teach my parents how to love me despite my queerness. He spoke more words to me in twenty minutes than my own father had over four months. All I could glean from his wisdom was that my parents’ only hope for me hinges upon my ability to fabricate remorse.

“You beautiful soul” She slurred across two hundred and seventeen miles of space, and I held the phone against the bed to keep my sobs private.

“Of course I miss you” she responded, so matter of fact.

“I know all of the things I said” she muttered into her lap before she drove away, before she escaped into the success I helped her build because “this is what feels healthiest to me” and

“now that you’re heartbroken, you’re a real lesbian” and

“I want a housewife” and

“I’m fucking terrified”

nullified the promises that preceded them:

“our relationship will only strengthen us” and

“you’re the trifecta” and

“you are more than everything I could imagine” and

“that was the best orgasm I’ve ever had” and

“I want to have a baby with you” and

“my moon and stars” and

“I’m so scared to lose you.”

It swells within me. It fills and empties and breaks.