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Favorite Room

She tells me
she still sees you pacing
the apartment in Cairo. This must
be what happens when one goes
before the other in a pair.
She tells me you lay beside her
in the bedroom with two twin beds;
that’s always been my favorite room
with the balcony doors that open,
sound of vendors’ voices singing
for a sale, for a pause in someone’s step,
to buy aish shami or mangos or roasted corn.
She turns the slats
of the white wooden shutters half closed,
and the dim world inside folds open
like her hand-crocheted blankets, folds
open like the lines in the desert, folds
open like your heart.
Slats half closed leave
lines on the floor and the walls, leave
places for the light. I wonder
when she sees you here,
flicker and figment in my favorite room
if the lines form shadows on your body, or
if she remembers you differently—
remembers you whole.

Yasmin Mariam Kloth’s writing explores love, loss, place and space, with a focus on her Middle Eastern Heritage. Yasmin’s work has appeared in various outlets, including JuxtaProse, the Rockvale Review, and others. Her first collection of poetry, Ancestry Unfinished: Poems of a Lost Generation, is available from Kelsay Books. 

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