This month I stopped writing. Not completely, but I do it in longer than usual intervals, in fewer entries in my journal, in shorter incoherent scraps penned in scattered Post-it notes and scratch papers. I am trying to remember the last time I picked up my pen and notebook or opened a blank document on my laptop and felt a familiar uprising—the pleasure of constellating a million stars. I am trying to remember how that feels, or if I will feel it here, later on, if it’ll build up as I expect it will as usual, or if I will end up still as lost as I began.
Like there is no right paragraph. Like maybe lost is not the most accurate word to define this. Maybe it’s the multitudes, and lately I realized it can be a double-edged sword, that it can tug at my chest like a deliberately drilled hole. I wish I could say I don’t know what caused this, just so I could go on with my days wondering about it more than feeling it, oh but I do.
Outside, in the front yard of another’s home, sparrows are hopping on the grass—so carefree, so in the moment as they seem. It is simple, I see it every day, and it is so important I feel it has to be shared but there is no one to share it with. I look for a while, but my mind sees something else. I shudder at the thought of some of their kin in bits and pieces. Who will find their feathers? What remains of them? Who will make them dead but whole?
I draw the curtains down, the sun is too blinding now. It rarely rains. The rain is not rain but water. I never raised my arm to gather droplets in my palm and taste them out of thirst. My palm loves to touch. When a touch is returned I feel it so acutely, like the hand holding me back carries me away from the world’s weight. Like something so delicate like a touch could null gravity. To hear a boy ask if they had seen his mother’s hands. How does it feel to be touched never of the same hands forever? To hold emptiness in its place?
One night, three years ago, in stillness and silence with only a faint light casting a shadow in the room, I pictured everyone dead except me. I pictured the house empty in its loneliness, the room with only a bed and a gloom that fills the air. No more laughter, just a distant echo of what used to break the silence. No more stories, just a memory of what had been shared. I ran out of breath. In Gaza, the doctors use the acronym WCNSF for a wounded child with no surviving family. This is an acronym that should never exist, but it does. The sorrow that comes from the thought of my family dead is almost unendurable, terrifying like a sin to write, but to live it? To have all of them—the people who made me believe that if home is a place it is in togetherness—gone.
There are no explosions and smoke in our skies. Our schools are not closed for the reason that most of the children enrolled are now dead. I have never been abducted for writing poems. Nobody forced me out of my home like a violated body.
The fan starts to make whirring sounds turning into a loud metallic screech. We had it repaired weeks ago, but the screech returned and I stopped trying to turn it on. For some reason, I feel connected to it more than I do with myself. My disconnection is a lonely blouse hanging in a clothing store, stitched up but not worn—waiting for me to pick it up and wear it home. It’s unrecognizable; even when I wear it, it doesn’t fit. I don’t often fit right into anything though, so if the blouse has a feeling, I understand what it means to stretch and crease and fold for someone and still end up alone in all my inadequacies. If only for a moment, if only for this letter, I allow myself to feel weak though not for long.
It’s news to my 5-year-old self what humans are capable of doing so it’s no news to me now, but the fact that it is not, the fact that to do evil is also what it means to be human, is what makes it so disgusting isn’t it? The false normalcy does not warrant indifference. Immunity is something I cannot afford. It is an illusion to me even. The unwilling memories, the continuing unapologetic mass destruction, the rage, the wounds—it’s all interconnected like an endless cycle of cause and effect.
This month last year I was trying to make a home out of a bottomless pit. The bed is a rock that scalds my back but I sleep in it, slipping away, losing track of days. I could’ve sworn there was no way I was getting out of it; my body does not forget, and neither does my mind. But I’m here somehow. If I look away I betray myself.
The world doesn’t stop even if I feel it should. Some nights I cannot feel for my present just as much as my future seems abruptly obscured, like my life suddenly feels too unimportant, too fleeting to be given much worth. It is not at all strange to me, I used to be slightly nihilistic. But each day I wake I’m still finding the little beauties I take in breath after breath. The house is a mess but only in preparation for what’s to come, and it reminds me of rebuilding. Our neighbor’s baby is four months old and doesn’t cry when we say hi; her family takes good care of her. My best friend is back. My brother is coming home. I am going somewhere. And I am glad in all of this, even while at the same time my heart holds an equal weight of sorrow.
I see a man holding out a precious bottle of water to an injured dog. I see a boy sing verses of the Qur’an while being operated on without anesthesia. For every wounded child with no surviving family, a kind neighbor offers their care. For every tear gas canister thrown, a plant is grown inside it. For every day without a ceasefire, there is unrest.
If hope is the thing with feathers like Emily Dickinson said, then it’s here and everywhere I look, no matter what. They can bomb it to bits and still see it floating in front of their eyes.
When I opened my journal only two words came out: I’m sorry. I can’t count the times I’ve said that word these days like a prayer. I abandoned my words mid-thought. It all seemed so inadequate for what is happening, too small for heaviness. But I am here somehow. If I stop, I betray myself. Even if right now this is all I have it is better than nothing. The small things we do in the name of love are better than nothing. Even if sometimes it is lost on me I am trying to make my seconds worth something not only for myself.
I did not stop believing words have the power to change the world.
I know, because it changed me first.