Origins
There’s a pain in the heart as if it’s sore from walking too far past mountains,
looking for another cavity to beat in
The moments I prayed “this will be history eventually”
while squeezing my eyes shut so tight
the sockets nearly swallowed them
The moments I traced a decaying tree’s branches
to their origins against a sky that was so white
it blinded me
The moments I tried to see order in a child’s tangle of lines,
only to realize that it was actual chaos
they wanted to express
The metal hull of an airplane pushes through clouds and I think
we will never be birds
you will never hear us sing
because we have been sucked into roaring engines
our wings and beaks ripped away
What if someone shot a thousand arrows
But instead of their calculated trajectories
They became a murmuration that swirled this way and that
Dancing for the frightful people below
bending around the tip of buildings and traffic lights
Everyone would laugh and celebrate
Not having been pierced by an arrowhead
Why is it that ants can build their nests in cracks of concrete everywhere
carrying things much bigger than themselves
I instead starve for all places and none
and carry nothing
an emptiness, when I should be full
immobile, when I should run
Here we are, rooted by an anchor that
we dropped ourselves in a sea
without shores
that will eventually drown us
but at least we can think
we are free
Nina Kamooei is a writer based in Ellicott City, Maryland. She was born in Limburg, Germany, to Iranian refugees. When she's not writing, she's raising two children and coding.
