Status Updates From Forest of Noise: Poems

“I’ve personally lost three friends to war, a city to darkness, and a language to fear. This was not easy to survive, but survival proved necessary to master. But of all things, losing the only photo of my grandfather under the rubble of my house was a real disaster.”

“My four-year-old daughter, Yaffa, wearing a pink dress given to her by a friend, hears a bomb explode. She gasps, covers her mouth with her dress’s ruffles. Yazzan, her five-and-a-half-year-old brother, grabs a blanket warmed by his sleepy body. He lays the blanket on his sister. You can hide now, he assures her.”

‘At fifth grade, I visit the school library.
On a wall by the door, a poster claims,
“If you read books, you live more than one life.”
Now I’m thirty and whenever I look at faces
around me, old or young, on each forehead I read:
“If you live in Gaza, you die several times.” ‘