Orange Blossom

Sometimes I wake up feeling like my eyes are laced with orange blossom

Like my hair is dripping with Turkish coffee

And the wind whistles “with a wish” in my aunts voice

Abdel halim serenades me out of bed

And we wander together

His Asmarani

I wash my face with frankincense from my mothers teapot

And my vitamins fall down my throat in the form of myrrh from my father’s hands

I drape myself in clothes embroidered with my grandmothers fingers

And my aches float out of my body and form rain clouds in the sky

Other times I wake up separated like oil and water

A leaf falls from my succulent and I can feel my skin flake off of my body

The rain clouds sit on my chest and my insides shake vigorously with the sounds of thunder

I see a figure sat between a record store on Bleaker street and my dad’s jasmine tree

On a bench that’s green like Zaatar

And covered in sesame seeds

She’s doused in olive oil and her hair, in a French braid, tickles her lower back

Her hands are crocheted together and she’s engrossed in a collection of Neruda poems

And as I sit next to this figure I look inter her eyes

And see that they’re laced with orange blossom

And the spinning top falls.

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Zuhoor Al Sayegh is an interdisciplinary artist from the United Arab Emirates. She is currently a senior at the School of The Art institute of Chicago. Al Sayegh is inspired mainly by her cultural heritage and the challenges that come with that; but more so uncovering and trying to show the world the beauty that isn’t often portrayed in the media. Al Sayegh is also greatly inspired by nature, the ocean that raised her and the flowers that gave her her name (Zuhoor meaning flowers in Arabic). This informs her material choices, often finding a certain beauty in crafting her work from the ground up.