Ritual recital of an undocumented  history

Appeared  in The Rising Phoenix Review on 30 July 2024

Ritual recital of an undocumented history

By Khalil Sima'an

Our morning coffee is a ritual.
A reminder that this temporary
reunion is an occasion to rock

and sway memories that wholly refuse
to expire. Our morning coffee
is, indeed, an ancient ritual.

Today, like yesterday, father unfolds
his memory and reads the unwritten
words from a seventy year distant page,
he finds exactly the same mournful words
and I find his mournful words the same too

and between the unwritten lines and pages
in a nation’s history, we slurp
the coffee in tandem and synchrony.

Tomorrow, the coffee will be brand new
and, indeed, the same mournful story too,
the day after I shall depart and leave
him behind with the ancient olive trees
and all remaining present-absentees,

and like all damned deserters of duty
and confused survivors of catastrophe,
I am weighed down by a purple shadow,

it sleeps on my pillow and awakens me
like a grumbling lover, it marks my days
with trivial trifles and foolish regrets,
while I recite his undocumented words
in the aroma and taste of coffee.

Our morning coffee was a ritual.