If There Is Nothing Worthwhile In Me, How Do I Go Forward From Here? How Do I Live As A Creature And

Fires burn in the shape of mountains, mere miles from my porch step.

The vegetation cries in red and grey.

My feet in my front yard grass ground themselves there, against the peeking patches of dirt hiding beneath the stiff yellowing blades, as if nature itself is afraid to look at its destruction. I cannot look away.

Our dry seasons get drier, rain will become myth, and water legend. I wonder when it will be my turn to record the destruction, to tell others of what happened to me, and not hear of what happened to others. I wonder if that day will be today.

I’ve whittled myself down,

Suckled myself to nothing like a cough drop in a cheek,

And all I have to show for this betrayal, is a familiar flavor in my mouth to mull over as the adults speak.

It took three. The first killed her parents, in the home they used to share. The second took her legs, leaving only her arms to hold her. The third took her life. It took three bombs for Israel to murder a little girl. But it only takes the death of one child to devastate a world.

If I pull the dagger out

What will be left of me

I am blood unspilt, nothing more.

Share with me your shame, distill your weakness so that I may drink it like wine. Your secrets are precious to me, nothing shocks a man like me.

Ode to the Red Boy

I see a red boy winking, perpetually still. His right eye is closed, his left open, unmoving. He wears pajamas, the Spiderman kind my brother used to wear when he was small. The red boy is on the floor of a hospital in Gaza, his blood caked on his face with soot and ash. His chest does not rise and fall, his eyes do not blink, but he holds his wink. One eye shut, the other open. A playful gesture, as if he's playing a trick on me. As if soon he would awaken and wash the red from his face like strawberry jam, and go play with his spider-man figurine in the sunlight. But he does not move, the red boy. The fluorescent light holds him still. His swollen eyelid does not so much as twitch. He is determined to fool me, and I am happy to be fooled. If it means he will one day wake up, I am happy to be fooled.

I cling to the anchor because I think the ship will drown me.

I crave the familiarity of the salt water over the cold whipping of the air.

Because I would rather drown than change, I would rather stay stuck in the same place for the rest of my life than breath the air of tomorrow.

I want so badly to be great but I don’t know how.

If nothing else, I will always have my misery. Like a child that does not grow old but cries and cries in her cradle, only silencing in my arms. She is mine, and I am hers.

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

What a pretty little lie we peddle children as loves are ended by mouth, laws are written on paper, and wars are declared in ink.