The Unsung
There is a song for everything,
even for an anthill crushed
beneath a passing boot.
But its story cannot rise in song
the way a bee shares her odysseys
with wax-faced sunflowers.
There is a song for my body, too.
I received the lyrics
from my surgeon:
asymmetries to be lifted,
war scars reconstructed.
There will be stitches
to soften the trauma,
but the aftermath
can never be
fully reversed.
I sing the words back
to my therapist
There is a history for everything,
she reflects.
Some lines
are buried within,
but the body knows
mysterious ways
to rehearse them.
I nod and wonder:
Someday the mirror
will draw out
the softest angle
of my face.
*
Tunnel Vision
They say
they found a mass.
The MRI technologist
calls me into the room,
asks where I’m from,
whether I support
this new war.
Then he turns
to the student.
“I told you—
only here,
or on TikTok,
will you meet
every kind of person.”
The contrast
will enter your bloodstream
so we can see
more clearly.
He gently slides me
into the tunnel.
Don’t breathe.
Suddenly
I’m back
under another ceiling.
Another voice.
Another
don’t move.
The commands
are unchanged.
I hear the gunfire.
They can see through me now.
I am a body
where
a mass of lives
came to rest
before the earth.
*
Homebound
The train reminds me
of my heart.
Not because
both have chambers
stitched together
by veins,
wires,
and currents—
but because
both are crowded.
The train
with passengers.
My heart
with the selves
I have buried.
Every chamber
a platform.
With every beat,
I look up,
waiting
for one of them
to step back in
and call this place
home.
*
Sarwa Azeez is a Kurdish poet, essayist, and Fulbright scholar. She holds an MA in English Literature from Leicester University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. A Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the author of Remote (4Word, UK, 2019). Her poetry and prose have appeared in World Literature Today, Collateral Journal, the other side of hope, Genocide Studies and Prevention, Women Writing for a Change, and elsewhere.
