Ghosts
I have become a ghost.
I haunt each room I enter. Cannot find anchor.
Can you understand? I am here, and I am not.
Floating between worlds of the living and the un-alive,
my mind crumbling like the homes, the shops,
the schools and hospitals and lives that once were. Dust to dust.
A child covered in ash and blood asks, Do I still live?
The adult filming him says yes, you are alive.
Clutching my phone, witnessing this boy’s unraveling,
I do not know if this is truth.
How alive he must have been not long ago,
kicking soccer balls with his friends,
caring for neighborhood cats. Not this stunned shell of a child.
How many times in his very few years
he must have been called hayati, my life.
And if his family is no longer alive,
is he still somebody’s beloved?
Is there anyone left to care?
I speak to the other ghosts through my phone screen, a funhouse mirror.
I love you, I say. I am you. I’m sorry. Please don’t die.
Words gather in my throat like water
trickling from a rusted pipe. I can’t stop coughing.
I will the water I sip to cross the earth and soothe a parched throat,
clean a wound, harmonize with formula to nourish a baby
whose mother is lying in pieces under rubble.
The people are drinking the sea. The sea.
The water is poisoned but my people will drink, will stay alive
by any means possible, even an hour longer, a day.
We have been rehearsing death all our lives.
Every Palestinian is practiced in this. We stockpile food, guard our children’s every footstep, hang talismans in every door frame. Because we know the worst that can happen.
It is happening right now. And yet we are not destroyed.
Today we may fall but tomorrow we march.
Today I am a ghost but tomorrow may God
make me be a ball of light.
We choose life with each sip of water. Each embrace
of a loved one. Each dance, each ululation of joy.
Each meal lovingly prepared by hands
older than the occupation of the land on which they were born.
Each ripe olive and apricot picked
from a backyard tree, seeds tucked under clothing,
close to the heart for safekeeping. For just in case.
For later. Can you imagine?
Somehow, we keep looking to the future
even though it is constantly being ripped
from our grasp. We will not let go.
The stars ground us and illuminate our path.
Our lives are a speculative fiction but we persist.
Bury us and we will grow like wildflowers through the smallest of cracks.
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