What have I survived
By Mahmoud Alshaer
Translated by Wiam El-Tamami
I survived—came out of yesterday
alive, carried out on the shoulders
of the wind. Now I can cry—not
to confess, but to clear the silence
pent up in the throat, which preserves
the shadows of sounds. Unshackle me
from the time that circles my wrists.
A new day breaks, knowing nothing
of my history: how I spent half my life
measuring the distance bombs leave behind
in the soul. My body is a map of a broken
time; mornings unnamed. I feel my ribs with
my hands: like columns of a house, half
standing, half collapsed. I walk with steps whose
roads have been ripped out.
What have I survived?
Rubble that swallowed cities whole?
Memory that is no longer memory, but a palimpsest
of ash piled up in my throat? I have left,
but the place has not left me. I am trying
to shore up the crumbs of my life. To salvage
the part of me that has not yet been
bombed. The part that was hiding
in my chest all along,
like a small light.