Inspired by and paraphrased from this anonymous message from a young man in Iran published by Equator, commenting on how the fervour he feels from outside the country does not consider the fallout of the supposed heroic actions of their saviours.

The diaspora is manic.

Disconnection,
bordering on hallucination.

Speaking a second language
hearing only the first.

Opposite things can be true
as enemy flags flow
in harmonic waves.

Rhetoric raises ghosts
outside of reality’s window.
Feverish certainty
knows no consequence.

Outside is only more noise
in solidarity with itself.

But here,
real,
live,
breathing…
‘symbols’!

Fantasy politics, safely
in faraway fields,
grain-fed on grief
no one has to harvest.

Take these children,
lay them neatly on the altar
of an unnamed dawn.

Call it tomorrow.

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Today’s Daily Stoic poem:

Don’t Tell Yourself Stories

Are the tales we tell about ourselves really true?
Was everything so certain and so real?
Don’t create a fantasy around everything you do
When for others it holds no appeal.