Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

On the day of the apocalypse, I’m reminded twice of all the people I have lost on battle fields, 

The wild life, petal of strength stuffed in the nostril of dead people, that is to say, my father 

Survived the civil war and years before he met the woman that would later become my mother 

In Sarkin Pawa, he was learning to swim, learning to travel, taking the legs of the wind and walking The surface of the Mediterranean; a ball  

room for survivors, for victors, for people that would later Build a home, a family, a bouquet of January-February-March-December children.  

This is to say my Mother is the only rose flower nurturing the sapling of light. My brother, scattered on the face of Goggle maps like 

 geography, like physics explaining the equations of motion in simple V= U + at 

Like valleys resting between my fingers my brothers are vagabonds, they were born on the roads And they might die on the roads. My  

sisters, my sisters are stars, constellating the beauty of night 

The silence of quiet my sisters are soft-petal-lip balm caressing the tone of language in high-pitched Words, PITCHBLEND in low-pitched  

words TENDER , my sisters are tenderness tending tenderly our Home. Here, a man once said home is a place I must have seen but can’t  

explain but I remember 

Being born in the year of the disconnections when every boy was to himself and my father became A body, exiled into the depths of dust  

and void and my brother, my brother says : mother, how do I differentiate a garden from a flower? Mother says son : a garden is a home  

you plant flowers but A graveyard is where you plant your heroes and what differentiates a hero from a flower is the markIt leaves in your  

heart, the snippet of grief mixed with anxiety and longing. She says son: a home is 

A place that births you, she says son: a home is the place your chest lays to rest, she says son: a home is the place you carry in your chest ,  

she says son: home is a piece of an offering you must 

Protect, she says son: home is water, home is healing, home is love, she says son: don’t you ever Mistake home for family because home  

is where your family belongs. I fall to my feet and asked 

Mother, how does a boy my age carry a home on fire? Because lately people in Sarkin Pawa mistake Crows for bullet and its passionate  

urge to wipe out existence, I said mother, how does a boy carry A home and all its insecurities in my chest and not feel the heaviness, I said  

mother, how do I call the Place that scattered my family home? She says son: on the first day of the civil war, I met your father And that  

there on the battle field was where our home began so how would you deny being called a warrior, how does a boy born on the battle field  

deny being called a battle child? How do you name A group of boys that never smiled? How do you name a home lost in the dust of the  

wild? How do you name the broken pieces of family you’ve piled? She says son: Home is water, home is healing, 

Home is love.