I was given a place, you said —
“I am wounded and have no place to go.”
But you tore the earth from under us,
sliced through the soft tissue of our lives.
Now you call it our house, our land,
and yet here I stand, a stranger,
a trespasser, a refugee within my own flesh.
You say I don’t belong,
that I hold no right to breathe this air.
I was born in this cage,
wrapped in my brothers’ grief as in a shroud,
our wounds seeping blood like weary soldiers returning home.
The bombs, crushing our lives and houses —
they remind us that hope itself is slaughtered,
life disappearing into dust.
The screaming sirens hold dead voices,
whispers of those who sleep no more,
while my own veins pulse with grief,
and my feet walk among bodies
with limbs torn apart, fragments of their tenderness
lingering, hands that once held me close.
In the darkness, I wonder,
how many days have slipped by since Father died?
How many years circle in my own bones?
My father’s voice is the hum of broken things,
weeping as he wraps me in whispers of hope.
All he wanted was a few friends for me, a simple life —
not riches, not the dazzling casinos of Las Vegas,
only the sun, the soil, the water.
But you say our blood runs different,
that we are worth less, that we are less human —
so you keep us sealed behind armored walls,
thick silence pressing down like lead.
Even those we called kin
turn their backs and find friendship in you,
their faces blurred in our memory.
Out of despair, my father took a stone, hurled it into the crowd,
thinking — someone, somewhere —
would hear the crack in his voice.
He knew it meant death to him,
knew he would be cut down like the others,
but he held to a hope,
a strip of earth he could pass on,
a friend or two, a shred of faith
swelling with sorrow in the barren desert.
Out of hopelessness, when life itself becomes a question,
a matter of survival,
he and his friends — they turned their hands to fire, to stone,
flung their lives against unyielding steel,
forcing you to see, to look, to understand.
He knew the weight of it, knew it was wrong,
but he wanted someone to listen,
for us to breathe for his sacrifice,
to call this land our own as freely as you do.
You speak of freedom, democracy, prosperity —
words stripped of meaning, dressed in the costume
of your own supremacy,
your belief that your moral ground
stands firmer than ours.
You are weak in the heart, with your morals corroded,
and neither your wealth, nor your progress, nor your boldness
will save a child who has done nothing wrong,
who only took his first breath in his own land.
Can you not see my eyes,
see the bodies, the crumbled streets?
Our faces tilt skyward, yet no one answers.
What did I ask of you?
Only a corner of earth, just enough for my parents and me,
this land that echoes with the voices of our ancestors.
Instead, you spit on us, conspire against us,
because we hold to a faith you do not understand,
because we are a burden you refuse to bear.
And suppose, somehow, I survive the blood and dust,
the air choked with bombs and smoke —
will I ever see my parents’ faces again?
In this place, I carry ghosts —
my brothers, my father, their bones scattered in the dirt
that should have held them close.
If I grow old here, what will I do?
Will I take stones into my own hands,
write the same story my father did,
carve my rage in blood?
I do not know.
But even if, in the ruin of our street, I find a friend,
if I stumble across my mother’s smile,
you will still be a corpse to me,
a living wound draped in fine clothes,
hands slick with the blood of our dreams.
Somewhere, perhaps, a god watches.
Or maybe only the stars burn as witness,
our sweat rising as rain.
And in that wind, a part of my story
stirs, hoping to wake a warrior,
to breathe life into what remains.
