Mama, Olive Trees, and Paradise

By Layla Al-Zubi

The garden springs,

and oil drips from the olive tree.

 

Mama sits silently.

I wonder

 

if she knows that beauty

drips from her sweetly.

 

With a dallo and stool,

she plants her seat.

 

Mama picks precisely

the swollen olives to beat.

 

Her skin, with the

movement of the sun,

                                   

is salient, a warm nur.

Dark wispy hair in a bun,

 

Mama moves mutely,

glowing, because

 

the doors of paradise

lie beneath her feet. 

 

Layla Al-Zubi is a graduate of Johns Hopkins University with a Bachelors of Arts in Writing Seminars and minor in Islamic Studies. She is an immigrant of Jordanian descent. Her work has appeared in The Things Unsaid.