The Marrow of Longing by Celeste Snowber

longing resides in the marrow
an ache for a land I do not know
terrain inside the cavities
of my chest, asking to be
made familiar with the territory
of a place where one knows
belonging

she spoke of a land she never knew
over and over again I heard the
tales of leaving when one or two years old in genocide
as if time had passed and she was ten or twenty
longing for a land was bred in my mother
perhaps her parents ached for the Armenia
they left, and even the beauty of Cambridge, Massachusetts
could not equal what was in their cells

the body has a way of knowing roots
places of viscera – soles of feet are souls
knowing where earth has raised them
I am a child raised between land and sea
borders between is where I find home
an ache is still reaching inside to find
the earth in my body
my body in the earth

longing is the passage
it is not to be fixed
but to recognize what is always
present on the inside.