She slept on her bed,
never woke up again.
Her bed has become her grave,
a tomb beneath the ceiling of her room,
the ceiling a cenotaph.
No name, no year of birth,
no year of death, no epitaph.
Only blood and a smashed
picture frame in ruin
next to her.
•
In Jabalia camp, a mother collects her daughter’s
flesh in a piggy bank,
hoping to buy her a plot
on a river in a faraway land.
•
A group of mute people
were talking sign.
When a bomb fell,
they fell silent.
•
It rained again last night.
The new plant looked for
an umbrella in the garage.
The bombing got intense
and our house looked for
a shelter in the neighborhood.
•
I leave the door to my room open, so the words in my books,
the titles, and names of authors and publishers,
could flee when they hear the bombs.
•
I became homeless once but
the rubble of my city
covered the streets.
•
They could not find a stretcher
to carry your body. They put
you on a wooden door they found
under the rubble:
Your neighbors: a moving wall.
•
The scars on our children’s faces
will look for you.
Our children’s amputated legs
will run after you.
•
He left the house to buy some bread for his kids.
News of his death made it home,
but not the bread.
No bread.
Death sits to eat whoever remains of the kids.
No need for a table, no need for bread.
•
A father wakes up at night, sees
the random colors on the walls
drawn by his four-year-old daughter.
The colors are about four feet high.
Next year, they would be five.
But the painter has died
in an air strike.
There are no colors anymore.
There are no walls.
•
I changed the order of my books on the shelves.
Two days later, the war broke out.
Beware of changing the order of your books!
•
What are you thinking?
What thinking?
What you?
You?
Is there still you?
You there?
•
Where should people go? Should they
build a big ladder and go up?
But heaven has been blocked by the drones
and F-16s and the smoke of death.
•
My son asks me whether,
when we return to Gaza,
I could get him a puppy.
I say, “I promise, if we can find any.”
I ask my son if he wishes to become
a pilot when he grows up.
He says he won’t wish
to drop bombs on people and houses.
•
When we die, our souls leave our bodies,
take with them everything they loved
in our bedrooms: the perfume bottles,
the makeup, the necklaces, and the pens.
In Gaza, our bodies and rooms get crushed.
Nothing remains for the soul.
Even our souls,
they get stuck under the rubble for weeks.
This is drawn from “Forest of Noise.”
