I am the only one left
who knows how to make the bread
that came from Armenia
where my grandmother was born
in Eastern Anatolia, a region
the Turks swallowed whole in 1915.
The bread escaped with her
to a Beirut orphanage, emerged
from my mother’s hands
wrist-deep in flour, butter, milk
kneading with rhythmic purpose,
a folk dance of clenched fists
until the dough, no longer sticky,
was lifted from the bowl, into my hands.
