Ammon News - Hend Fayez Abuenein

Writing for Ammon News


The poplar tree just outside my bedroom window
We grew up together, she and I.
Her leaves flirted my senses into womanhood
I saw her green and naked
She saw me child and grown

Chestnuts popping off my mother’s stove
Where a century-old log
Of a Jerashi olive tree burned,
Musky incense sweeping away the scorched nuts’ aroma

The pain left in my soles
From tiptoeing barefoot on Lot-old pebbles
As I stared west at the falling sun
On the bank of the salty lake

My father’s grave every Friday morning
Just thirty paces behind the millennium-old tree
In the cemetery where wind had a magic flute

The scented breath of every newborn dawn
As I sneak to the porch wrapped in my mother’s shawl
Trying to return the greetings of the early birds,
And waiting for the next line of my word weave

All the roads I paved with my girlish trots on my way here
All the apricot trees uprooted for cement implants
All the souls hovering in the air

How long does it take for a girl to call a place home?


Hend Fayez Abuenein - A Jordanian expatriate
hendfayez@gmail.com