on holding rose water
My family never stopped migrating. We fight
so hard. With each other and ourselves. Don’t
talk about that. Not now. There is never
a good time and I learn that songs are the only
moments that last forever. But my mother
always brings me the instant coffee my
dede drank before he died. She wraps it
so carefully in a plastic bag from the market
that we go to when Caddebostan feels unreachable.
We don’t talk about that. Or the grief.
Or my short hair. I want to know what
dede would have said. I want to know that he
can feel the warm wind too if he tried.
We fight so hard. We open the tops of
each other’s heads and watch the birds
fly out. We still don’t talk about my dede.
Copyright © 2021 by beyza ozer. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 6, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
“This is a poem about grief on multiple levels. It holds the grief of losing someone, the grief of what a relationship could have been, and the grief of not being able to express grief itself. It is about the beginning of the process of becoming the first person in an immigrant family to be vulnerable and capable of showing emotion, and taking the steps to confront family trauma.”
—beyza ozer
beyza ozer
beyza ozer is a queer/trans/Muslim person living in Chicago and the author of Fail Better (fog machine press, 2017). They are manuscript editor of Critical Inquiry.