All My Life I Never Once
sliced into a pomegranate.
It was delivered to me
open and pretty—
turned up pithy with fresh
juice just starting
to soak the inner white
flesh—
all I can ask now is why,
why wasn’t I given any fruit
(but most of all this fruit)
to hold in my hand with
all its potential?
Still, I will buy a lone ruman
when in season and leave it
unopen. Watch it shrivel
to a dry ruby rind before
collapsing in on itself,
like a little Arab city
falling across a century
into ruin.
Majda Gama is the author of The Call of Paradise, selected by Diane Seuss as winner of the 2022 Two Sylvias Chapbook Prize. Her full-length poetry manuscript won the 2023 Wandering Aengus Book Award and is forthcoming in spring 2025. Born in Beirut to a Saudi father and and American mother, she’s currently based in Northern Virginia, where she writes and tends to an Audubon-certified native plant garden.
Header photo by Cornell J, courtesy Shutterstock. Photo of Majda Gama by Sara T Gama.
