Untitled By Lila Choudry
the nation begins long before the border does before ink splits the land into names, before maps learned permanance,
there were already mouths full of different songs. smoke rises from kitchens.
riverwater carries prayers downstream.
hands stained with saffron, engine grease, incense grandmothers thread history through needles. children asleep in the backseats of borrowed lang all of it breathing at once all of it carried forward into the body of the country. and somehow,
all of them held beneath the same sky. think that is what astonished me most:
the intimacy of coexistence.
that strangers move beside one another carrying entire civilizations under their ribs-wars and wedding songs recipes memorized by the hands, grief passed carefully between generations like heirloom silver. and still,
morning finds all of us together. a mosque breathing blue into dusk church bells unraveling through cold air. music spilling from apartment windows.
neighbors exchanging fruit over fences. someone pausing to help a stranger whose language they do not fully understand, yet understanding anyway.
sometimes i think a country is not made
from land at all, but from the fragile miracle
of people continuing to reach for one another despite every reason not to.
constellations are not made from identical stars.
they become visible because separate lights
agree to burn beside one another.
a country breathing all its people at once.
as if humanity itself is one long conversation between strangers learning, again and again,
how to call each other home
Lila's Bio
Lila Choudry is a sophomore at Trinity Preparatory School in Winter Park, Florida. She serves as an editor for the school newspaper and as vice president of the literary magazine, contributing both reporting and creative work. Her writing often centers on poetry and short fiction influenced by music, visual art, and the complexities of human experience. Outside the page, she enjoys reading, playing bass guitar, and watching perhaps more films than she should.