Atia Sattar
Atia Sattar is a Pakistani-born poet whose writing explores the embodied intersections of grief, gender, race, and motherhood. Her writing has appeared in Rogue Agent (Pushcart Nomination), Cathexis Northwest Press, Lion’s Roar, Tricycle, Academe, and the Cambridge Quarterly of Health Care Ethics. She is Associate Teaching Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University of Southern California.
How many bodies of young children must be found, hands bound, for you to see it?
Some days I dig my nails into my flesh,
hoping to excavate brown joy.
Tell me, is this what resilience looks like?
A homemade matcha latte in one hand;
in the other, a mobile screen scrolling bodies?
I pay someone to unearth the knots buried in my back
because my framework can no longer process
the stress of bearing witness.
Is this what resilience looks like?
I turn away from the rubble and find
my children reaching up to touch my breasts.
I bend over.
“Look,” they say, “the shadows on the ceiling
look like bunnies.”
“No, manatees.”
There is a pink silicone bowl on the kitchen table.
A pudgy little arm, still intact,
spoons sooji halwa into
a rosebud mouth, smiling,
“Thank you, mama.”
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