There's a Baby Within the Beast

         For the children of Iran.

I wrote this poem after I saw a baby in a demonstration in Toronto while protesting the murder of Jîna Mahsa Aminî . The protest was very difficult emotionally; everyone was crying, screaming, grieving in unison. I got completely distracted by the baby and momentarily forgot about the atrocious circumstances that brought me and the people around me here. I thought about how this baby was the future of Iran. It was a brief, beautiful moment. 

Around me: splintering ache running from forearms         

into teeth. Vocal cords burnt dry from                                          

screaming outcry. Flags burning, sirens, someone asks,

“Is anyone here a doctor?”

Around me: fifty thousand lungs brimming with

fury, convulsing into madness, shaking like a single beast,

All this, all this, and I can’t help staring at this baby.

There’s this baby

in a pram in front of me, cooing, batting her lashes, the two of us locked in an unblinking trance,

she doesn’t know embarrassment yet. She doesn’t know not to stare.

“Please, we need a doctor!”

How out of place this baby is, here, new among the withered, fresh.

Floating above the screams of grief, as the beast rocks senseless,

back and forth, hemorrhaging loss, screaming bloody murder. As the crowd coagulates,

I’m getting digested, compressed into a single mass, choking and constricted,

vessels and shirt buttons popping, I gasp, but Oh!—The baby raises a finger,

reaches out and touches my cheek,

An echoed hush, a large freedom flag pushes wind through my hair,

and this finger breathes new into the beast again.