Tags
Armenia, artsakh, count the scars, Nagorno-Karabagh, poem, Poetry, sonnet
Less than a week. Thirty-five years of war
ended … like that. Already its become
myth. Lands none can return to; one more scar
for the soul. Scars … and the narcissism
that nostalgia brings will be the headstone
on my grave. Holy mountains I’ll never
return to. “Artsakh” comes out like a moan
each time I say its name. You’re dead, lover,
buried near Shusha. “Lick me,” you had said,
one of the things that your husband refused
to do; your tickled pink. Now all Artsakh
has been abandoned along with its dead.
Less than a week. All that forfeited blood
festering. The reek of yearning and shock.
notes.
Shusha is a city in the Southern Caucasus Karabakh mountains (also known as Nagorno-Karabakh). The Republic of Artsakh has, since the fall of the USSR, been fighting for their right of self-determination against their neighbor, Azerbaijan, which sees the entire region as part of its own.
Now [10/4/2023] a week has passed since the ethnic Armenians of Artsakh agreed to a ceasefire, agreeing that by the New Year the Republic will cease to be. It has been estimated that within 48-hours of that declaration more than 100,000 citizens fled Artsakh, leaving behind everything. I’m not Armenian but this loss and the dread of what horrors might entice an entire population to leave has consumed all my days of late, my dreams, my disbelief.
memories of my ghost sista 