I open my phone

we gather in the heart of the city to mourn the loss of innocent life and the conscience of humanity. there are candles and heavy spirits carrying the weight of twelve months of harboured anger at a world that refuses to listen to the screams of the children. we hold a minute of silence for the martyrs. I feel the tears itch down my neck and into my collar and cannot fathom the resilience of those who have always known, who never had a choice to wake up to the truth but have carried the pain of their people’s persecution for decades. a ten year old Palestinian takes to the microphone to report on the massacre of fifteen thousand children, asking why nobody on the news seems to care. behind me, between the mourners and the police, a reporter adjusts her hair in the reflection of the camera. I wonder what she’s going to say about us and what she really thinks.

the crowd is still as stone and the vigil is like a funeral. there are poems and speeches and almost everyone cries. but there is no body over which we mourn. there is mention of parents unable to recover any identifying feature of their children from the rubble of their schools to bury. I cry in shame at the horrors I dismissed as ‘too complicated’ just one year ago. we are reminded that there is no such thing, that there is no symmetry between resistance and colonial genocide, that for the systems that govern our every day some suffering is just too inconvenient to acknowledge.

on the platform I open my phone to a sea of pleas for validation. the apathy is deafening. I see myself in this epidemic of self obsession and I am sick. I scroll and mourn the faith I once held in a world that cares. in the shower I wash my face and want to wake up.

the horizon in a mural on the wall

 I visited you in my dream after my run before dawn. it was somewhere on the coast, warm like the island you used to call home for a while. we were out for drinks with your friends in the evening at the bar by the beach. the windows were open and the breeze was cool. I sat across from you and wanted to be closer. you read my mind and gestured towards the water. I followed you down to the boardwalk, which we walked beside the water til we met the horizon in a mural on a wall. you showed me through a door under a lamp above the fading sun I’d thought was real. passing through the frame we kissed our way through narrow passages in the dark. we stumbled and fell onto each other and for a moment there was forever and nothing between us. we were caught by a woman muttering curses under her breath and slicing through vases and boxes like cake with an axe. she scared us to our feet and we ran but I lost you somewhere in the darkness of the wall. in the early morning I came home to an apartment in the city where I was born. I opened the door to the professors I go to work for clearing out my furniture. they asked for help lifting the table down the stairs onto the street. as I obliged I caught a glimpse of a silhouette I don’t quite recognise watching dancing on the screen on the wall in the lounge.

there is always more I want to tell you. there is so much I can’t say. I swim in the ocean and wonder if you wish you could forget.

rivers of blood

there are thousands in the square today and the air is heavy with the heat of the summer to come. on two blue screens a message warns the masses against displaying certain flags and images, which will amount to a criminal offence. there is talk of daring to believe in the idea of humanitarian law, or a world order that believes enough in the sanctity of shared humanity to cry more than empty words of sympathy for the massacre of thousands. there is talk of another way that we can be, of standing in resistance to the greed of the lucky few at the expense of billions. there is talk of tomorrow and the rising price of oil; how much innocent blood is enough for the seats at the table to stand? we hear the testimonies from under the trees: over three million displaced, sixteen thousand children martyred, all with the unwavering support of the country I call home. the police stand on the outskirts of the crowd, armed to serve and protect civil society against the rebels in case they raise a flag.

on the street as I leave I read a sign that says ‘rivers of blood’. at the store I catch myself in the camera watching me scan the food I’ll forget at the back of my fridge and I am complicit in my apathetic existence. I dream of waking to a world that isn’t this.

brighter days

there are so many colours and there will be brighter days ahead. every morning with the sun or the rain and the news I can read about bombs on my screen. I open the door and there is a store on every corner. isn’t it wonderful?

nowhere I have been

how can truth exist in a world where I choose to believe in only what I want to hear? the only voice is the voice I choose to listen to. where is the alternative and what will it take for me to change? the thought that any of the pixels and the shapes they make might matter in the morning is little help to anyone. the rubble covers over everything and I’ll wake up all the same.

knowing where and who I am means nothing, I still want to hear your voice. I miss you every day, knowing nobody is more than a person or a match for the memory of joy I thought was ours. beyond my dreams we’re strangers and you’re nowhere I have been.

my humanity

in the office I try to focus on the work. there is laughter and a lot of talk of weekend plans and life beyond the spreadsheets. I laugh when I should and ask the right questions, sustaining the current of content spouting from their mouths. at some point I stop making sense of the sound and it’s all empty shapes and white noise.

the murmurs underscore my afternoon. I colour columns and bridge knowledge from one place to another in a language I don’t quite understand. I miss the call I never thought would come after years of waiting. on the screen I am congratulated for verifying my humanity with the click of a button.

I listen all day and leave with nothing to say or show for where I’ve been. I try to laugh at the meaning I draw from all the wrong places, amounting to nothing at all. tomorrow I will do the same. everything is work and work is everything until it’s not and I’m home with my thoughts and the phone. before bed I’ll wake up and scream in silence at the world and the part I seem to play in the scene that makes no sense. I’ll tell myself to change, though I’m scared and far too tired. when I wake there’s another day of noise and bombs to fund with the taxes they take from my time. I am where I am for now til I’m not.

at the wrong time

in my dream we go to a church that isn’t ours. the pews are packed so we sit at the back and listen to the whispering of strangers sharing our religion. the congregation stands and when the music starts it’s my favourite song about never going home again. the priest walks down the aisle as the choir sings the lyrics of the psalm that pulses colour through my psyche. the angels in the choir and on the coloured windows sing of favourite friends and explosions on the television. I hear my parents join in and watch the man on the cross, motionless in agony, hanging high on the walls above every altar in chapels built for mourning everywhere. I wonder if he’s listening and if he likes the song.

at dusk my phone buzzes and reminds me to take my tablets, as it has done every day since my life in the other hemisphere. of every ritual and face that came to make up that place that was a world I came to love, a reminder at the wrong time is all I can still claim as my own. I think of morning in another timezone and the parts of my heart I’ll never find again.

work is understaffed. I do everything I can but I’m running out of tea. the sun was out so I washed my clothes and hung them on the line. I use the microwave for dinner and miss having somewhere to be. today they bombed a new country. I watch the footage on the couch and listen to the planes outside.