Samar Najia

Tango and the Bible

The Chaplain is late,
lost amid carbon copy floors of curtained rooms
wrapping around a maze of hallways,
he finds her, but keeps his distance knowing,
the sombre air does not belong to him
amid the atheists and agnostics
and two catholics, one deceased.

His gestures are convincingly compassionate
for someone faithfully following the footsteps of doctors
who see the color of death
before you’ve had a chance to consider it.
It is never at the right time.

The bible is tucked like a professor’s notebook in his inner coat pocket,
marked with colored labels, he reads the psalms
to a chant of Amen.
It takes all of 3 minutes.
She is already in the “embrace of the lord”, he says.
She didn’t need to wait for his prayers.

Death has made her complex.
It pretends to bring peace to a life that never knew it.
This life packed with little stories that make her whole.
An obituary reads her name hyphenated, accentuated.
betraying so much of her plot.
The Spanish sounds in the letters naturally roll off your tongue
fearing her indignation at your lazy pronunciation.
Even in death.
She comes alive every time you say it.
The tango plays in the background.
A You Tube version crackles from a tinny loudspeaker
while the rhythm trails the final jags on the monitors.
The tango and the bible together fill the room.
She had left them behind.
But now, they have come back to find her.

Copyright © Samar A. Najia 2018

Samar Najia is an Arab American poet who grew up in Lebanon and Greece. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and has worked for over 20 years in the finance industry. She is currently working on a poetry collection about the Palestinian refugee from the viewpoint of a refugee mother and daughter.

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