My mom brought me sweet lemons the other day.
Reminding me they were my favorite.
Eat them before they rot – she said.
Impatience was a key ingredient here.
These are not regular lemons – they’re gifts of love
Cutting into its sun-kissed flesh
I greedily ate one hunched over the porcelain sink
Not bothering to grab a plate.
There were no ghosts to bear witness
The taste on my tongue was not
What I remembered.
A bitterness emerged
Was anything really sweet in this life?
That little girl was gone.
Moles
They want me to cut you off.
To peel you off my skin.
Do they think you make me hideous?
They said it to my face, red as the
Pomegranates in our yard. Ov-er?
The one who took your hope.
I will keep you on my skin.
I will look in the mirror and see your reflection.
I will write a book in your name.
Grandma’s Tea
Teapot resting atop kettle
Adorned in petite pink peonies
You turn and look at me
My hands, ignorant to the labor required to survive,
Reaching up for cabinets like a star in the sky
Fingers slipping on brass knobs
Limbs searching for something to satiate the hunger
Of an immigrant girl
Who you don’t understand
Who would beg you for a push on the swings in the sand
Thousands of miles away
From your home soil
Which was never really yours
To begin with
A land of saffron & rose
Of salty cheese nestled on warm flatbread
Men and women packed together, a rarity, to get their share
To break the fast
The same fast that lives in me
The forced fast of our ancestors
Haunting the hands that roll the grape leaves tight
Like my throat when I try to speak to you in
The tongue of my mother, of my homeland
I sit. In Silence. In the corner of a kitchen that does not belong to us
Devouring, the crunch from a golden bag, its contents dipped into thick yogurt from the corner market
Sometimes, the container is full of what the label promised.
“One day, she’ll make tea for you,” you say to my mother, hope in her eyes
As she pours two cups.
A secret still shrouded within you.
Bio:
Tenny Minassian is a vegan lifestyle coach and consultant living in Los Angeles with her Emotional Support Animal (ESA) Lucy. She’s an Armenian-American and immigrant from Iran. Tenny self-published her children’s book Lucy Goes to The Gentle Barn, and is working on other writing projects including poetry. She holds a B.A. in Journalism and M.A. in Communication Studies. She enjoys cooking, reading, writing, and traveling.
