The Unknown
by Yasmine Azzi 

An ironed piece of cloth
worn to follow Rigid Rules
in a Rigid system
not built for people like me. 

I am the product of suffering
Colonial conquest, erasure, and Imperial suffocation.
An immigrant’s daughter
Raised on lands once salted and arid,
Now blossoming full of fruit.  

I carry stories for those who can’t
and promise to heal.
I carry a nebulous cascade of knowledge,
all to lend an ear.  

I find myself peeling off layer after layer,
As though their Stories only permeate
between the fibers of my worn scrubs
instead of behind my eyelids each time they shut
Swirling between the Sulci of my Subconscious each night. 

Often, I found myself wondering
if the little boy on the swing,
or the young girl reading at the café,
carried silent neoplasms inside them too, 

I wanted to rush over and save them
Warn them, Scream even if I had to
Before it was too late.
It had been too late for so many.
Their names still lingering on my tongue, 

When you surround yourself with malignancy
It’s all you start to see.  

20 stories high
On a hot and humid Memphis afternoon,
I see a giggling toddler
Jumping in the water shoots below
And whisper to myself
Please don’t take her too.  

A small hand grips my own
Tightening as though I hold his last Breath in my palms,
Our fingers woven together in false promises,
A haze of medication and empty tests. 

I wish I could tell him the truth
Whisper it even
That no matter what we do
he’s Dying.
But I don’t.
I smile. I cry. I hope.  

We are the bearers of Truth,
We are amongst the privileged,
The powerful.
Yet no one teaches you,
at least not yet,
The dignity, peace, and utility of the unknowing.  

We’re trained to have answers.
To dig, to question, to find “truths,”
But never to accept the certainty of ambiguity
Or to even just face it.  

To look at the whole
Rather than the fragmented broken pieces
To sit with them,
feel their Sharp Edges,
rather than instantly gluing them back together again
searching for answers in the cracks we’ve created
and the Breath that becomes air.  

An attending once instructed me to cross my arms
And then cross them the opposite way.
Go ahead, try it
It’s Uncomfortable, isn’t it?
She said, “do that once a day, and I promise you, you’ll be a better doctor.”
I didn’t understand what she meant, and before I could look up from my uncomfortably placed arms and ask, she was gone.  

Years later now, I think she was trying to introduce me to the uncomfortable
so that one day
When faced with it
I’ll be ready to greet the unknown as an old Friend 

And maybe then,
I’ll be worthy of the Truths it contains.