Beacon St., February 19
Shahrazad says, Life is good, which we say when we are trying to convince ourselves, and when we mean it. We are on our way to get flowers for Oliver, who is not feeling well, from Mother’s Wine and Groceries. Bouquets cluster in the middle of the store. Swarms of pink, white that sticks out like cotton. Post-Valentine’s Valentine’s flowers. Shahrazad dreams of running a bakery that looks just like this place, selling flowers, cookbooks, root plants, fizzy drinks. Everything we need.
Family dinner is tonight. The semester just started and we’d only just coaxed the black leaves off abandoned plants. Shahrazad, Elliot, and I relocated three years ago to the cold tip of this continent, at once. Started our self-teaching, at once. Then, we met each other, fell in love, and began living together. Their casual advice has ameliorated the eroded edifice of my life.
When we return home, the hall light, flickering on and off, gives the apartment the half-finished quality of a dream. Elliot is chopping onion finely as her lover Oliver watches. Nadia, our adopted poet, enters through the front door. Nadia’s beliefs beautify her, they really do. She comes bearing news. She has been talking to a strange man for a year, and they are flying to France come March. A joke is made—someone needs to alert customs.
We bring so much food to the table that I’m surprised it can carry the weight. The table depresses in the middle where the love rolls in. Life is really good. It’s really good. We season. Things are good, Shahrazad says, and they are because she just closed on an apartment with her future husband. It’s bittersweet; we’ve made so much of each other. It’s bittersweet; what will other people make of us? The home-scent we can’t smell—it’ll disappear. Shahrazad's fiancé sends her a text—his aisle song—“Bless the Telephone.” The song is already in the queue, and if that’s not meant to be … Shahrazad starts crying before the lyrics start, just from the sound. Then, it’s Nadia, and then it’s me. Elliot checks our faces to confirm she isn’t the only one crying. I think Shahrazad’s happy she chose not to postpone the wedding. We have cried so much since October 7th. Shahrazad. Her family in Gaza. Nadia. Her family in the West Bank. Holidays passed with no one to thank.
The chicken is burnt and the spices come out with the smoke into the air. Elliot is the first to go, coughing into the hallway. Then it’s Oliver, who is quick to slide up the side window. Then it’s me, first choking it down, then pushing open the creaky back door to rickety stairs. It’s the dark underbelly of the home. We store too much on the turn of the staircase. My mom calls me, and I linger to pick up while everyone returns to the kitchen. I listen to wind coming in through a car window; I listen to my parents bickering. My mom complains that my dad drives like a jet trying to take off. I wish I was the wind. At the kitchen table, we don’t know what to say before we eat. My family thinks Bismillah (silently). Shahrazad’s says Bismillah (out loud). I still wordlessly move my mouth. Koreans, according to Oliver, say “I will eat well,” then, at the end of the meal, say, “I will have eaten well.”
After dinner, Shahrazad and I walk to get dessert ingredients. I dressed too warmly for the first time in months, and I feel sweat come in waves in my thermals. Our way of sitting in silence is talking about a whole lot. I’m so comfortable I’ll give her any of my thoughts, and I love her so much I’ll hear her voice anyway I can. At Star Market, we fight at the register. Shahrazad’s phone is faster than mine at payment. A group of teen boys, friends we think, have all started to work there and capitalize while hanging out. They laugh at us.
As Shahrazad chops chocolate, Nadia tells us about her mom. Elliot is rapt with attention. We all love Nadia’s mom. Shahrazad tells us about her best friend from back home. We listen. We all love her best friend. Love travels down each of our webs. I love everyone you love. Like little widows we spin in the center, stretching and building into our tapestries. We love everyone we love. Life is so good. We plan to take graduation pictures all together. We plan to meet in San Diego. We plan to live in D.C., a bikeable city. Shahrazad’s bike broke during the move here, to Somerville, and three years later, it is still immobilized and upside down, even though the bottom floor of our golden building is a kitschy bicycle shop, and we are leaving soon. When I leave, I love forgetting things in the apartment, so I can turn around and look at our Beacon.
Afri Arebu is an Ethiopian-American living in Brooklyn, NY. Her best journaling is done in the form of poems that are thought and rethought, and this is one of those entries.