by Christina Hajjar

I bear the fruits and flowers of home.
Habibti sighs, savours her harvest. 

Habibti sighs, savours her harvest. 
Tells me my blood must smell of roses.

My blood must taste of sun-soaked hedge roses.
Our first gen bodies know light like season. 

Ripening abundance always in season. 
Her bursting fruit, her fragrant waters.

My bursting fruit, her fragrant waters.
Strawberry patch forearm my lush takes her.

Strawberries and cream shisha I taste her. 
Macerated femme fruit between tongues.

Gardens and maps out of sweet syrup tongues.
Our young borderless bodies showing me home. 

---

Christina Hajjar is a Lebanese-Canadian artist, writer, and cultural worker whose practice considers intergenerational inheritance, domesticity, and place through diaspora, body archives, and cultural iconography. As a queer femme and first-generation subject, she is invested in the poetics of process, failure, and translation. She is the co-founder of Carnation Zine and creator of Diaspora Daughter, Diaspora Dyke zine. She is based in Winnipeg, Manitoba on Treaty 1 Territory. https://christinahajjar.com

---