“My heart is crying blood for my city and my people”
Seventy-six years and three passports later…
Here I am, watching the unthinkable unfold before me,
So far, yet so close
We took an eastward turn,
The opposite direction would come to see
Mothers preoccupied not by nesting
And adorning a nursery for new life
But by inscribing their children’s names in marker
On fragile arms and legs.
We are forced to bear witness.
“Shifa” should mean healing
Not a press conference held by doctors waiting to be taken captive
Sheltering from tank shells in the oncology ward
Begging for a ceasefire
Begging to permit aid to arrive from the south
WHO BOMBS A HOSPITAL??
Bisan informs us daily that she is still alive
But who knew that beneath a hospital whose namesake means healing
Three mass graves would be uncovered
All that would identify these souls
Would be zip tied hands and white coats
Shrapnel wounds and stethoscopes
A surgical theatre was intolerable to the occupiers
Arab blood they didn’t put there themselves
Here I am, At an institution in the heart of the empire
An institution where I learned the phrase
Do No Harm
Declares a student encampment more repulsive
Than mass graves under a hospital
A new medical acronym:
(Code watermelon)
(Code red, white, black, and green)
Wounded Child, No Surviving Family
How many audiences at the Hague
How many UN resolutions
Will it take
To convince them that Arabs bleed?
