Editor’s Note: To mark Kurdish History Month, we’ll be sharing poems by Kurdish poet, translator, and Fulbright scholar Sarwa Azeez—one poem each week throughout March. Our thanks to Sarwa for sending her work.

Sarwa Azeez

Fitting

The day of the air raids
everyone around me placed an index finger
on their lips
don’t make a sound
press into that corner
pretend you are not there
how much I wished I were
the mouse
slipping into dark cracks
vanishing toward nothing
but I survived that day.
I grew larger and larger
until my narratives
could no longer fit into holes.
Sometimes I still try to squeeze into cracks
only to pull my sunken parts back out.

Sarwa Azeez is a Kurdish poet, translator, and Fulbright scholar with an MA in English Literature at Leicester University and an MFA from Nebraska-Lincoln University. She is a Pushcart prize nominee and her debut poetry collection, Remote, was published in the UK by 4Word in 2019. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications including Parentheses Journal, Collateral Journal, the other side of hope, Genocide Studies and Prevention Journal, Feral Journal, and elsewhere.