All My Life I Never Once

sliced into a pomegranate.
It was delivered to me
open and pretty—

turned up pithy with fresh
juice just starting
to soak the inner white

flesh—
all I can ask now is why,
why wasn’t I given any fruit

(but most of all this fruit)
to hold in my hand with
all its potential?

Still, I will buy a lone ruman
when in season and leave it
unopen. Watch it shrivel

to a dry ruby rind before
collapsing in on itself,
like a little Arab city

falling across a century
into ruin.

Majda Gama is the author of The Call of Paradise, selected by Diane Seuss as winner of the 2022 Two Sylvias Chapbook Prize. Her full-length poetry manuscript won the 2023 Wandering Aengus Book Award and is forthcoming in spring 2025. Born in Beirut to a Saudi father and and American mother, she’s currently based in Northern Virginia, where she writes and tends to an Audubon-certified native plant garden.

Header photo by Cornell J, courtesy Shutterstock. Photo of Majda Gama by Sara T Gama.