“The Burden of Words,” a Poem by Fatemeh Shams

“The Burden of Words”

I think of the burden of words
how they hollow with repetition.
“Evacuation orders,” “Nuclear Bombs,” “Final solutions”
I think of the burden of memory—
how it storms back with every breath:
Friends, locked in solitary confinement,
Mass graves with no names.
Patients abandoned in hospitals.
Father, dying in our home
dreaming of my return,
as if my arrival could anchor him to life.
I scroll through the ruins of our home:
A grainy black-and-white photo—
a 45-year-old mother, rushing home to soothe her toddler.
A family picture.
The final smile of a Red Crescent nurse.
The charred remains of a two-month-old—
all obliterated by missiles.
My past
walks down the hallway
returned from a long war that lasted 8 years and killed one million
she knocks on my door
with only one arm.
Silently, I watch
but no longer recognize her.
smoke fills the hallway.
she wipes her tears
with an empty sleeve
then shuts the door forever.
Behind her war remains
and swallows her footprints.
40 years later:
I scroll up.
Orphans displaced again,
driven from their refuge to an unknown shelter.
I remember
Our government only sheltered us with missiles.
to keep us poor,
to kill in God’s name.
I think of the burden of survival
15 years in exile, and counting
And watching my homeland burning from afar

I think of my sister—sheltering in a stranger’s home,
with two other families she’s never known.
She is of 92 million vagabonds across Iran.
One of 10 million farewells whispered in Tehran.
I think of the burden of words
Of war songs with no singers.
Of tongues that dare not speak.
Of chemical wings, flying from the ghettos of Poland
to the camps of Lebanon,
their shadows cast long—
from Gaza to Tehran.
I think of my mother’s eyes
under the black rain of summer.
I think of Chernobyl in Iran.
Eight is a cursed number,
and this is the eighth day
of madness.
Our rhymes died with children in bread lines
Our voices as empty as their mothers’ arms.
They say to write poetry after atrocity is barbaric
but what else remains?
We etch our grief in a dying tongue,
each word a betrayal,
each silence a wound.
What is left of language
when it cannot stop the killing?
When it cannot cradle a child?
Still, I write—
not to forgive
but to remember.