Reflections in Kermanshah

the sky yawns us into existence
spits the lonely image of our crumbling bodies
onto the barren desserts of Kermanshah
we are huddling forward towards some unnameable future
me and my mother, my mother and i
hand in hand, awaiting our past to come and grapple us by the throat
uncertainty lurking underneath the thick of our skin
we are waiting to shed our history like eyelashes,
small and forgetful pieces blown into non existence by the wind.
but there’s a rawness that brews within,
that spills over the samovar gurgling tea
there are memories blooming stellate and hungry across our flesh.
there is a past, a revolution threatening to shatter open our ribs
we storm ourselves into forgetting.
sew our bodies into the sea.
thread silence into our wounds.
it’s so easy to slick the mind into forgetting.
but the heart — it shakes and whimpers, spins the world out of axis,
growling and hungry.
we are two bodies cocooned by the middle-eastern sun
stripped to the bone by a past and an unforeseeable future.
hand in hand. waiting.

By Nazanin Soghrati

Biography:

Nazanin Soghrati is a 16-year-old high school student from Toronto, Ontario.