to the Assy family:
to my family,
which means that one day,
when my vital organs fail me
or when karma decides
it is no longer interested,
in trying to counterbalance
gains and losses
I will be put to the ground,
and buried alongside
others
whom I have had the serendipity
of encountering
these past few
years.
Although they would be tempted to,
the earthworms will not
segregate —
"this is my grave,
that is your tombstone";
we will all wither wickedly away
just the same,
and decay decadently
just the same,
irreverently irrespective,
of any interjections issued up,
by our DNA
that flails
its tentacles
shamelessly shunning out
misfits and miscreants
that it so conveniently dubs,
diverting blame
to all those who happen
to be hampered by
missing members.
I belong to a gravesite —
one so familiar
yet so uncanny
strange lands begin to feel like home,
and home, like strange lands.
Jessy Assy earned her BA in English Literature & Minor in Creative Writing (2010) and M.A. in English Literature (2013) from the American University of Beirut. At present, she is a Full-time Rhetoric & Composition Instructor in the Communication Skills Department at AUB. As an American-Lebanese currently residing in Lebanon, her relationship with the Arab world is complicated, to say the least. She always feels more Lebanese than Armenian when speaking Armenian, and more Armenian than Lebanese when speaking Arabic. The golden mean – it seems – has always been English, so "home" for her has never been a place, but a person – two actually: her husband and her son.
