Perla Kantarjian: It’s May in Lebanon and the Figs Are Deciding on Their Sweetness

The loquats have ripened, the sea is showing off.
If you’ve been here you’ll know that something
in the air keeps us more alive than dead, breathing
in a perpetual summer, breathing out dates and names.
But the season cannot cover the killing
that the ceasefire forgot to stop.
I tried to enter summer, I did.
I bought the sandals. I washed the white dress.
My mind goes instead to the 2659 of us killed in the villages,
in the hospitals, in the cars since March,
since the second war, the third, I have lost count,
who would have been dipping janerek in salt too now,
their fingers stained purple from the mulberries,
their summer clothes still folded, waiting to be wrong.

– Perla Kantarjian