Although – Nora Nadjarian

Although

Although we can still talk about it as survivors do
and all the faces in the photos are dead as if the photos have been ripped
or burnt to ashes, collected in envelopes and sealed and sent to lost relatives
there is always the feeling, that gut feeling, that we were never told enough
or that we didn’t resist enough or weren’t enough, and these people walking
across a desert and sometimes on waves like Jesus, proving that they could,
like he could, cross over borders where people pinpointed them and pointed
at them and couldn’t pronounce their long names, even if their lives were
basically the same, except for the drowning, that terrible drowning
the papers wrote about, I know all about it, believe me,
my mouth is ash.

…

Nora Nadjarian is a Cypriot poet and writer who has been published internationally. Placed or commended in numerous competitions, she recently won the Anthropocene Valentine’s Day Poetry Competition 2022. She has work forthcoming from Broken Sleep books and Poetry International. @NoraNadj