I am the poet Mohammad Ali Niazmand. I am the trial lawyer Mo Hamoudi.

I am still Mohammad—your would-be building-crumbler, who has no point of origin.

This is the snake's time, to walk to the sea in search of a star.

I am caught between surrendering my spirit and asking you to remember me.

I grew up in Tehran during the war with Iraq. Our city was bombed at night. My mother feared I would be sent away to fight, so she decided we had to leave.

We reached America by way of Pakistan with a hundred dollars and two suitcases. My English was poor. I wrote poems anyway.

When my mother became sick, she stayed with me. You love in ways no one I could ever imagine has loved, she told me. When I said my chest hurt, she said, that is your heart breaking. I have carried her voice even though that voice failed me. Even though many failed me.

I am the poet Mohammad Ali Niazmand.
I am the trial lawyer Mo Hamoudi.

I am an elegist who refuses to mourn or love cheaply, a poet of two names, two countries, and two truths held at once, who trusts image and argument to carry what he won't let himself simply say.

Remember me, I don't want to disappear.

So my life aspires to be a love poem. A life inspired by a handful that understand me.
And a wife and son who love me.

You, like me, deserve that life.