Judge’s Choice for Best Creative Writing in the Student/Resident Category
© Sheharyar Sarwar, DO
PGY-3, Department of Psychiatry
I am stuck between two languages
With a hand full of syllables
And twisted tongue.
I was eloquent when nine,
Before flying over the Atlantic,
Before seeing colors of skin
Lighter and darker than my own
In degrees I did not know existed.
I keep my writing
To the left of the page,
Afraid of spilling into parts I do not yet know,
Afraid of spaces the way my father is afraid
Of gaps in his memory; he tells us stories to fill
The years he feels he has not lived.
My past is a haze of rushed
Moments, of bricks being thrown at worshipers
On my side of the wall as they prostrated, of boys
Dodging cars to catch loose kites, of guns
Claiming victory upon the rooftops of wealthy men
As women in makeshift tents huddle over their young:
What goes up comes down in raging fury.
In dreams, I am running from lions in
The streets of Pittsburgh, then holding
A dead, homeless man outside my apartment
In West Haven, as a child, a younger me, sobs, “grandpa.”
Other times, my table lamp is the sun bending
Towards a lawn of dead things in Lahore
Where an old woman spills ram’s blood
On the earth surrounding a wilted mango tree,
Pleading: live.
In love, I am awkward
The way I was on the first day of school
In America, equipped with one phrase,
“Is this pig meat?”
What’s your name? “Is this pig meat?”
In loving, I am honest, between two lines
Of a page, where I can write a spring time
Of my beloved walking through orchards of my childhood,
Playing a game of hide-and-seek among trees
That told a history of my family better
Than my elders: “Your great-grandfather planted
these Jamun berry trees and ate them with sea salt
when they were in season until all his shirts
were red with stains.”
They say Jamun berries stain the way blood stains
And to tell the difference, one must wait
until one’s clothes are dry; mothers
tell their children that far away, at the border,
the war is only a great big feast (of Jamun berries)
and their fathers
were brought home, asleep.
In America, my father sought Jamun berries
But settled for a mint and tomato garden
My brother mowed over several springs ago.
Often, sitting together, we forget how long
It has been since that night my mother counted
All her china and wrapped it newspapers, saying:
“We cannot go to another country without plates.”
Judge’s Comments:
This poem does such an arresting job of bringing this speaker’s two worlds to life and exposing the sharp contrasts between the two. The longing is as palpable as it is enduring.