- Mar 21
- 2 min read
How We Died Without Her Spoon
Khanjoon, خانجون, my grandmother—born with a spoon in her hand,
always ready to place it in someone’s mouth. Open up!
With palmfuls
of sugar, she sweetened saffron rice, stirred with bits of pistachio,
whorls of cinnamon. Her love, too gritty
for my teeth.
Eat! I obliged with a full stomach, regurgitating each lump
like a sheep. Kept a cup of water at hand
for the acrid sap.
When my mother's thyroid bulged like a drowned bird, I blamed
Khanjoon's cooking—her knack for shoving surrender
down our throats.
I even blamed her god, the Beneficent, the Merciful, rising
in her cigarette smoke, each puff—
Arabic words
from the Qur’an she never understood. Salavaat, blessings
to the prophet, three times, for the blackout to end.
Ayat-al-Korsi before a journey.
May you live to be a hundred and twenty, a wish for a grandchild
bringing her pills. Yet, no prayer of hers saved my mother
like America.
Before we left, she hugged us with all her might.
Our bones cracked in the folds of her skin.
We drank her in
like warm milk. Licked each drop off the floor. Devoured
every grain of her last dish. Died hungry
without her spoon.
LEILA FARJAMI is an Iranian-American poet and psychotherapist. Her debut collection, Daughter of Salt, an Editor’s Selection at Trio House Press, is forthcoming in 2026. She is the recipient of The Iowa Review Award in Poetry, The Cincinnati Review’s Schiff Award, and a PEN America Emerging Voices Fellowship, and was runner-up for the Auburn Witness Poetry Prize. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, The Iowa Review, Pleiades, AGNI, The Cincinnati Review, and elsewhere. She lives in Los Angeles.