People say write a poem about it.
And I probably will since
leaving an empty space where a poem needs to
exist is like locking the door on a hurricane.
Spilling out, this poem will elude me.
Trimming it into a tidy hedge,
I’ll hear children stuck in full stops.
Neat spaces between words, over they’ll jump like
endless rows of dead mothers, brothers.
Probably somewhere in Gaza
a woman sucks in her tummy one
last time. Looking in a gold-
edged mirror willing to be body positive under
siege. Another sits at a desk, hobbled by the
terror of attacks or the blank page
in front of her. Keyboard clacks, backspace –
No more murder becomes never was.
Pinching the parameters of Palestine on a map, she
adjusts, dragging outwards, filling
lungs across the land, as people walk with
ease between this ancestral olive grove, this
settler complex. “Welcome” they sang, to the boats
towed into a Palestinian port long ago.
“The Germans destroyed our families and homes – don’t you destroy our hopes.”
Palestinian bakeries are targets. To kill the spirit you cannot
allow the scent of fresh baked bread because
loaves carry life. Day to day to day life and if you wish to
end a people you must crush all joy.
Silence the laughter. I wonder, do the birds still
sing in Gaza? I don’t know if they can
patchwork a nest above genocide, rolled out like
a macabre carpet – “Snakes and rats,
listen!” says the voice on the phone. “We, your benevolent
enemy will destroy your hope and home in five.
So run.” And I am running too.
Past the empty nests, the blackened bakery.
A metallic voice from the sky,
laughs, “don’t destroy our hope” as clouds
empty poison and I run across the map.
See the writer, she runs with me. The woman, body
positive runs. She runs for fear not fitness
and we run, we run. Back to the safety of an empty poem,
looking for a space on the page.
But the poem is dead.
The woman, her body negative, dead.
Words lost in the dirt. The writer is dead.
Birds’ hearts bursting in pain. Dead
And I am dead, we zombie dead,
fingers stained red scrolling
soundbites and socials
of the dead.
But the dead are silent,
as we are silent,
as the corpses we skip
with a swipe of our witness finger.
We are dead to the dying in Gaza.