“I love it when you hate the world”
—Zuko, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Because it means you feel something
other than empty, other than the sad
exhausted into numb. Because
the reverend says the world is too small
for anything but love but the Bible says
there is a time for hate. Because
I love your hands’ scars more than
I love what caused them. Because the scars
are odes not to the harm but the healing.
Because you cannot reconcile
the world’s beauty with the vastness
of a mass grave, with another father
cradling a pulseless daughter, with
the line between genesis and genocide.
Because no one should have to.
Because the lands where those you love
live do not love them back.
Because sometimes the gravity
of care is too strong for you to walk.
Because you worry love is just
a preamble to grief. Because you tire
of grief. Because you are tired.
Because you have every reason
to no longer want to live, and yet
you live. Because your hate burns
a brilliant red, feeding on the way
the trash amasses, the winds wail,
the world bends—but your love,
though appearing softer, burns blue.
on the sparrow
“For his eye is on the sparrow,
And I know he watches me.”
– Christian hymn
Marshall M. Fredericks Sculpture Museum
Saginaw County, Michigan
if in the absence of the sun’s
glare you can see through the floor-
to-ceiling museum windows
the plaster-white arms of christ
plastered on the opposite wall
can see the gaze of tilted head
atop 28-foot sculpture looking
down at you perhaps
or instead at the bird
who must have flown straight
into the cleaned-clear glass and
if there be mercy it must have broke
its neck instantly a sharp thump
and then
now readied to spend
the night bent right in the line of sight
of those stone-blank eyes silent and
still
at your feet
legs
looking down you see the wet
just under your big toe was just
a moment ago a centipede & now
is just the husk you hadn’t
seen it before too focused
on the maybe- broken toilet
& what is there to do
but clean up the aftermath
you’ve heard advice to not
kill centipedes nor spiders
they eat the other less-wanted
pests all bodies will produce
a corpse one way to be productive
is to cause many corpses a life
earned by the life it
takes you don’t know how
to fix the toilet the porcelain
crowning the tank is heavy
hard fragile you set it
back in its place
cover the inner- workings
not meant to be seen
even after being wiped
up with a piece of toilet paper
one of the centipede’s legs
is left behind twitching
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Logo by Mina M. Jafari
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We Are More is an inclusive space for SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) and SWANA diaspora writers to tell our stories, our way. Curated by Michelle Zamanian, this new column seeks to disrupt the media’s negative and stereotypical narratives by creating a consistent platform to be heard, outside of and beyond the waxing and waning interest of the news cycle. We’ll publish creative nonfiction, graphic essays, fiction, poetry, and interviews by SWANA writers on a wide variety of subject matter.
