Carrying the Room on my Back

The suitcase was never empty.
Inside: the creak 
of my grandmother’s floor,
my brother’s whistle, 
the weight of apricots 
ripening too soon.

I carried them 
through cities 
that mistook silence 
for forgetting.

When I unpack,
the air shifts—
smells of saffron,
something burnt
I cannot name
but that names me back:

an echo,
an accusation.

It unbuttons 
my throat.

NIMA KIAN

Nima Kian is a Pushcart Prize–nominated Iranian American poet whose work explores migrations of language, memory, and place. His writing traces the porous borders between past and present, home and elsewhere. He teaches writing in Berkeley, California, and his poems have appeared or are forthcoming in national and international journals and anthologies.