July 29, 2025

My neighbor grows cucumbers.

In my garden, the vines are struggling—a weak clutch of tepid
yellow blossoms. I planted too late, perhaps, or else something in the soil’s
gone off. When I see her one afternoon, my neighbor tells me there are
too many now to eat by herself. “Come by,” she says. “Take some.”

Habibi**, if I could, I would carry these across the ocean.
I want to do so many things for you, and I can’t.
Instead, I walk back to my own kitchen, find a cutting board,
take the small knife, slice down the center.

Inside, the seeds look like eyes half-lidded, as if stirred from a dream
in which neighbors’ hands keep opening and opening and opening.