by Aziza Bizanz

Sneak preview: This post includes poetry that reflects on growing resilience and liberation from the rubble of dislocation and trauma.  

Sagittarius Moon

Like Salmon my body knows
The direction of home
Sweet
Salty
Bones align 
Where the moon meets
Pinpoints exact coordinates 
Blood moves like rivers to the central ventricle

Cells, fluids converged
In remembering
The sounds the forest made 
On the day of my birth
Which could be felt in the wilderness inside me
Winding streams routed to the ocean
Same pathways blood takes to reach my heart.

We were born into rupture 
so deep
exile
So deep
Empty spaces where roots belong
Where roots
Long 
To be
We cannot move upward without roots
They said
How many times will I re-enact the dislocation of my people?
Lapis tells me you cannot move downward without truth
Throat expansion supports bones remembering

Healing is what we fire people do
Burning away everything 
That stands in the way
Of fighting 
For truth
Which is the same as love
Burning down to the ground systems 
That keep us In projection,
Unable to look
Directly at my pain
At your pain
At
My rage
At
Your rage
Splitting from 
What makes us magic
To uphold a version of survival
That doesn’t serve us 
Not your liberation
Not mineIf we want our magic back
We must be intimate with
The parts of us that we have rejected
The parts of others that we have cast away
Begin to hold a tension that feels like danger
But is actually a wounded liberation
Rising from the ashes.

Centaur arching 
Kahlil sag moon 
Bring back to salmon

Aziza Bisanz (she/her) is a somatic therapist living on Dakota land - Minneapolis, MN. Aziza’s work centers around the experiences of multi-racial people, BIPOC, trans-racial adoptees, recent immigrants and queer and trans folx. Her experience includes work with individuals around healing lived trauma as well as generational and historical trauma and regaining personal and collective power and narrative. Aziza writes with the Mizna Arab Arts Writing Collective and is part of a larger collective of SWANA healers, SWANA HUB bridging ancestral homelands with currently occupied land via work with plants. Aziza's maternal line descends from the SWANA region (specifically land that is now called Lebanon) and her paternal line descends from Ireland and land that is now called France.