Feed Me from Your Garden Heart Again || Nareh Ayvazyan

i dreamt of your sunny room again last night. 

of your dusty old albums filled with Anatolian tales, 

of your dried orange peels tucked between gowns to keep the moths away. 

grief tightens around my throat like a barbed wire, 

there are no sooth-sayings for the way I lost you.

the first sacrifice of a brutal winter. 

i pull out the unlabeled shoeboxes filled with flower seeds from last year.

there never was an opportune time to tend to the garden, 

to harvest our fears and plant something hopeful in their stead.

it’s only after an age of sorrow that the need for creation arises, 

for the birth of something benevolent, splendid,

to replace the shriveled old shrubbery of our decaying minds.

i sketch the layout of the garden, a row of roses here and one of tulips there, 

i pause only to take sips of my black coffee, Middle Eastern style, 

when finished, the cup is turned upside down, a habit I’m loath to let go of. 

coffee grounds spill down into the floral saucer

for a fortune that needs not telling, 

no prophecies are needed for the savage truth that has dug itself a burrow in my heart.

as surely as life prevails, 

death will visit my garden again. 

unpicked fruits will rot and beddings of weed will cover my labored-over lawns.

and it is a brave thing - perhaps a reckless thing - to plan a garden at a time of calamity.

for to dig bare, ungloved hands into soil so depraved and floury, to plant life, 

is to have hope for a tomorrow that will come one day. 

Nareh Ayvazyan is an English teacher and a (BA) Linguistics and Foreign Languages graduate living in Yerevan, Armenia. Most of her works aim to show the beauty of her homeland, as well as to tap into her ancestry. Her poems were published in the fifth and tenth issues of HyeBred magazine. Her gothic short was published in the seventh issue of Littledeath magazine.