The Secret

By EB Ramzi

Issue 51 • Spring 2025 • Poetry

This poem tied for third place in the Spring Contest, judged by Sara Daniele Rivera, who wrote: “This poem makes me think of the tenuousness of what we can hold to, cling to, as members of a diaspora. The unsayable secrets, the figments and curses and loss layered throughout a family story. How we miss things we can’t even name; how this absence manifests in a particular way for Palestinian diaspora. The lack of punctuation at the end of stanzas was a beautiful thematic choice that made me feel like I was constantly falling off an edge.”

You’re trying to quit, you tell me, attempting a smile
through the shattered-glass strain of your lungs
I try to smile back, but my mouth is numb and swollen

I am distracted by the texture of the words
that come out thin and aerated
as if gone on ahead to wait for you

Your father had it
Your mother
Your sister who went before you
clasped your hands on her deathbed and told you
I will prepare the table

In Ramallah, your cousin walks around
with an unlit cigarette stuck to his lower lip
the entire duration of my visit

I miss how it tastes.
The weight of it between my fingers, he confesses
before lighting an imaginary match, pulling it to his lips
then dropping it out the car window
leaving tiny fires like breadcrumbs
all the way to Ruqab

Are we cursed?
I want to ask, but don’t
because I already know the answer
Can see it without having been there
without having even been born yet

Your mother fastening the gold medallion
of St. George to your sailor suit
praying over your small head in whispers
against the rocking of the city around you
against the plumes that dot the skyline
fine dust of plaster and concrete
that make their way
shway shway
into your nose, your mouth,
down larynx to trachea,
Settling into bronchioles like a homecoming

I’m trying to quit, you tell me
but when you close your eyes, the words are there
lit up on the backs of your eyelids,
flashing in time with your laboured breathing

I’m trying to quit, you tell me
squeezing my hand so tight that for a moment I forget where we are
forget the beeping machines, the antiseptic, the smell of rot

I’m trying to quit, you tell me
squeezing my hand so fast that for a moment that I forget when we are
and remember what is not mine to remember:
Orange trees
A clocktower
The sea

I’m trying to quit, you tell me
but I miss it too much

EB Ramzi

EB Ramzi writes poetry, fiction and non-fiction about Palestine and the Palestinian diaspora experience. Her writing has been published in Bring Me Gold: 50 Poems for Palestine, The Rumpus, and others.

Shizue Seigel

Shizue Seigel is a San Franciscan who explores history, culture and spirituality through prose, poetry and art. Her Japanese American family was incarcerated during WWII, and she grew up in segregated Baltimore, Occupied Japan, and California farm labor camps. A college dropout schooled by the Haight-Ashbury, Indian ashrams, and public housing, she was recognized by a 2021 Jefferson Award for supporting marginalized communities through her arts organization, Write Now! SF Bay. Her nine books include five Write Now! anthologies, and she has curated exhibitions of artists/writers of color at Sanchez Art Center, San Luis Obispo County Library, and UC Santa Barbara. www.WriteNowSF.com. www.shizueseigel.com.