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The Weight of Elsewhere 'Part One'
Letters from Borrowed Ground
'Part One'
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To: Myself (Three Years Ago)
Date: Every Night
Status: Never Finished
Focus: Warning
Dear Dreamer,
Tonight, I dig up buried footsteps,
each stone beneath my feet heavy with goodbye.
The coffee grows cold in my cup
as I write this at 3 AM,
watching snow fall on a street
whose name I still can't pronounce.
You think you know what leaving means—
but you have no idea how shadows
walk backward through forgotten maps,
how your mother's voice will sound
thin and distant through phone static,
how you'll memorize the cost
of international calling cards.
I want to tell you that roads forget names too,
that compasses spin wild when they lose true north.
But maybe you need to discover
the weight of elsewhere yourself.
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To: The City I Left Behind
Date: October 3rd, 2024, 4 AM
Subject: Guilt
Focus: Betrayal
My dearest city of closed doors,
Your street signs fade to unfamiliar letters in my dreams,
your windows no longer reflect my hurried footsteps
rushing to catch the last bus before curfew.
I smell your bakeries in every foreign morning—
warm sangak bread that tastes like childhood,
cardamom tea that my landlord here
calls "exotic spice."
But I also remember the silence
that swallowed midnight knocks,
the way conversations died
when strangers entered cafés,
the headlines that shifted
faster than currency rates.
*Even the trees want to leave*
Your plane trees bend toward a sky
thick with unspoken words,
their roots pulling back from earth
where jasmine once carried my mother's lullabies
and now carries the weight
of what we couldn't say.
I'm sorry I chose elsewhere
over the sound of your call to prayer,
but I couldn't choose
the weight of your silence.
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Copyright ©
Saeed Koushan
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