Portside

Life Jacket

By Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad

When barbed wires carve

unwelcome prints

into your raw palms,

and lawmakers stack votes

like concrete blocks

before your feet, engulfed

by the sterile soil of homelessness,

stay back

Away from tent cities

and the swarm of stations,

piled with the color-gone fabric

of makeshift blankets, shredded shoes

and bones used to rest your head 

And pull,

the blue threads of your chest,

lower the arms you raise

only to surrender

and cloak the numbed body,

the witness of ghosts

hovering in the history

of your birthplace

Make a lifejacket

of your embrace,

and paddle in the blood

of your own channels

where each cell carries

a piece of your breath

Swim,

until you find it,

the clasp fused with despair,

unfasten, and rip the way

back into the swallow of your heart,

return to that home

forever your host

Unfold your flag there,

in the open quarters, rinse,

your skin still too soft

to bear the ink of

world leaders; remember,

you were born first

into a province of hope,

long before you waited

behind anyone’s borders,

even your own

Mehrnoosh Torbatnejad was born and raised in New York.  Her poetry has appeared in The Missing Slate, Passages North, HEArt Journal Online, Pinch Journal, and is forthcoming in Painted Bride Quarterly. She is the poetry editor for Noble / Gas Qtrly, and a Best of the Net, Pushchart Prize, and Best New Poets nominee. She currently lives in New York where she practices matrimonial law.

This poem was first published in HEArt Online — the nation’s only journal of art & literature devoted to fighting discrimination and promoting social justice.