EID-19

​MARIJA BILJAN

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6-foot-tall boys
around blue chair on wheels
lamb bones
lying between their feet

There are only a couple of spoons tucked in the
wide oven tray
I count more than ten hands digging
white rice with meat

blue chair becomes a table
sacrifice turns into a feast

Brown sauce squeezed between
long fingers
music fills our ears

You try to forget
it's been
five years now
of foreign land
of seas and deserts
between

Feast and sacrifice
Raising and filling
small glasses with tea

As sugar melts
your voices travel
far away and over

Seas and deserts
that yesterday
gave you hope
and today
keep you apart

Seas and deserts
years that go by
so many to remember
too many that never will

Merge their voices
and join your circles

Of music, food and cards

They stay somewhere
in between and
always too far
​
(dedicated to friends from Gambia who live in Palermo, Sicily, Italy)