unIDentical

My niece read my birthplace — “Czechoslovakia”
and mocked:
“There is no such country, you were born nowhere,
you don’t exist”.
I swallowed my tongue,
I went blue like an infant too tightly swaddled,
abandoned on history’s doorstep.
Now, there is a beautiful park in that place
where people like me walk their dogs,
people who are not recognized by history
as if by a surrogate mother.

_Translated by Tatev Chakhian
unIDentical, 2016