The earth shifts—
identity’s plates grind
beneath a fevered crust.
Drought cracks memory.
Dust storms erase self.
Where do you belong
when your homeland
drowns in salt?
We carry seeds
in our pockets
but soil no longer
recognizes their syntax.
Migration rewritten
by flood, by flame.
We follow
what still breathes.
Nomads now
on a planet
we no longer name.
All of us
displaced—
all of us reaching
for different air.
Our children inherit
a map that redraws itself
mid-sentence.
We are no longer immigrants
but omens—
canaries clutching
a forgotten note.
Home is a temperature,
a level of humidity,
a prayer
for rain.
In the end
we are again
searching for ground
that holds
even if it no longer listens.
Nima Kian is an Iranian-American poet who writes across migrations of language, memory, and place. His work explores 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.