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.