Iranian-American poet Sahar Fathi offers a discourse on longing and nostalgia with her incredibly poignant poem “All-the-time Home”. In lines thick with memory, Shar’s unique perspective as a daughter of immigrants is on full display, evident with yearning and with the grim solitude of absence.
All-the-time Home
Last night,
I saw my grandmother
All dressed up in pink on her couch
Entertaining the guests,
Hair done up right.
And I wanted to go to her.
Hide behind her apron,
Which smelled of khoresh and sharbat.
I wanted so badly
For her to be
Laughing loudly on the phone.
My mind filled with memories
Of summer mornings,
All of us
Sleeping in a row
On the floor
Half because
It’s so fun, we are finally
Together again,
And it’s a sleepover,
And we can whisper
Late into the night –
And half because
The grownups
Took all the beds,
And there are just
Too many of us –
A luxury
I yearn for
When we are back
In America and the
Weather is colder.
The idea that one could
Always have their
All-the-time home
Filled with family,
Brown-eyed and chattering,
Two kisses
In Farsi and English,
Makes my heart
Yearn,
Throbbing with loneliness,
Alone.
Sahar Fathi
Sahar graduated from the University of Washington Law School and is a member of the New York bar. She also earned a Masters in International Studies from the University of Washington, and graduated cum laude from the University of Southern California with a dual Bachelor of Arts in French and International Relations. Her poetry has been printed in Writers Resist, The Jesse Butler Women’s Poetry Contest Anthology (2020), and the Writers Resist: Anthology (2018). It has also been featured in The Halcyone, Other Worldly Women Press, Barzakh Magazine, For Women Who Roar, Platform Review, Fauxmoir, Swimming with Elephants, FEELINGS journal, ARTS by the People, and Not Your Mother’s Breastmilk. An Iranian-American, her favorite Persian dish is Fesenjoon, and in 2016 she finally mastered her Tadiq technique.