Survivor's Guilt
MAYA ALINAIZI
You weren't there when I was stretched out underneath you.
As the same for you, grown old and wrinkled, denatured, deformed.
I was born wilting and wizened, tired,
Born of immigrants of immigrants, a child not of their home land.
A child of changing states, of commute.
An immigrant myself, not old enough to grow my roots before they were ripped out
and shipped out, arriving a leafless frame of what was expected of me.
I learned and unlearned my mother tongue, twisted it in knots that were undone several years
later, when I returned to a home not my own.
Who am I if not peeling my skin, dying in the streets, giving birth to shells
and broken homes who still quietly live with each other.
Shadows and vague noises in a house, not humans, not family.
Entering living rooms and staring at beings watching the news with eyes glazed over, hearing
of the bombing of the land where their blood was supposed to spill,
where my blood was supposed to spill,
where my brains were supposed to cover the ground,
where my bones and ashes should be scattered.
But here I lay, skinless, fragile bones, empty tears,
hearing of relatives for the first time, relatives I never met.
I am death defying, I am immortal,
I am family-less, roots growing an inch beneath me, roots I cut to
remind myself of who I am, what I am, what I cannot be.
If not guilt-ridden, then carrying the generational trauma,
an inherited Arab gene, a back bending heaviness.
I carry it where I go, wherever I immigrate,
like a lame pet, a reflection of what I was supposed to be
Now I carry your trauma, your survivor's guilt, your bruises and the stacks of dead bodies
you hide in corners of your brain.
I feel the reality of my displacement when I see my face on the news, a ghost of me, a
doppelgänger.
I will leave nothing in the soil that I live on, expect an indistinct indent,
while they leave bomb prints and their bodies.
And now that I am a mix of all the places I’ve ever lived, a mouth that can speak several
languages, and different dialects of my native language,
accustomed to culture shock, and discrimination,
I will never belong anywhere.
Maya is an Iraqi-Canadian highschool student located in Saudi Arabia. She enjoys exploring heavy themes in various art forms and mediums.
Edited by Fatima AlJarman.