[...]
I am unfinished business.
The business that did not finish me
or my parents
won't leave my children
in peace. In my right hand.
a paper. In my left, a feather.
To toss, to quill, to meet
my terminal velocity.
I forget Palestine
has a kind way of remembering
those who mark
it for slaughter,
and those it marks for life.
I write for the future
because my present is demolished.
I fly to the future
to retrieve my demolished present
as a legible past. To see
what isn't hard to see
in a world that doesn't.
[...]
They did not mean to kill the children.
They meant to.
Too many kids got in the way
of precisely imprecise
one-ton bombs
dropped a thousand and one times
over the children's nights.
They will not forgive the children this sin.
They wanted to save them from future sins.
Or send them wrapped lifetimes
of reconstructive
surgical hours pro bono,
mental anguish to pass down
to their offspring.
Will the children have offspring?
This is what the bomb-droppers
did not know they wanted:
to see if others will be like them
after unquantifiable suffering.
They wanted to lead
their own study, but forgot
that not all suffering worships power
after survival. What childhood does
a destroyed childhood beget?
My parents showed me the way.
________________
Fady Joudah
[...]
Milkweed Editions
2024
