Beirut

 I heard once about ‘phantom limb pain’, a syndrome experienced by soldiers who had lost their limb during the war.

That part of their body is gone, but the pain is still there.

This is what the pain for my country feels like today. It is for a land that was stripped away from us long ago, a land that perhaps was not ours to begin with. Yet the pain lingers.

Although I walk a new land now, the rubble somehow followed and weighed heavy on me.

Although I speak a different language most days, it still tastes unfamiliar in my mouth.

No matter how I want to remove myself from this tragedy, the sounds and images seep into the cracks of my mind, and the dust from the ruins suffocates me.