For Khalto

By Stevie Chedid

/ Third Place, 2025 Plentitudes Prize in Poetry /      

Mama is off to Medjugorge. She asks me to write my prayers in a letter. Enveloped appeals to place at the feet of Our Lady. I forget what I prayed for, before all this. Greedy things. True love, my own health. Spit-blowing every seed off the dandelion. I scan Mama’s waiting face. Those golden eyes, like Beqaa hills in September, when she told you she was leaving for good. Eyes that watched missiles leaving spirals in the air, curly as your future niece’s hair. Ears that heard the dabke drumming over the whistling of bombs en route—a new mark to nightfall. Heard you whisper no one should be afraid of sunsets. Lips that spoke names of the martyred, the premature eulogies. A nose that smelled the fresh za’atar harvest, the Easter Sunday ka’ak. Her chest that pounds double time in the eternity between sending the question and hearing that You. Are. Still. Alive. Write down your prayers, she says. Just believe... It is always the end of August in your orchard and I cannot reach the ripest fig. I guess its fate. The ladder, broken. Listen, Khalto, when they call, please don’t pick up. You cannot go where they tell you to go. It’s all a trick, don’t you know? Mama left with no letter from me. My prayers and hers are the same now, Khalto. Our prayers now are all the same.

_________________

*Arabic Translations:

Khalto: Maternal aunt

Dabke: Traditional Levantine folk dance

Ka’ak: Traditional Lebanese easter cookie