Dear wife and mother #poem by Abigail George

 

Dear wife and mother
I wrote this poem to honour you
I put wildflowers atop the
rubble that marks the location
of your unmarked grave
Pain and violence in this
city have grown wings
Here, even the dead have
grown wings
They grew into birds overnight
Nour al-Din Hajjaj, deceased
Shahadah Al-Buhbahan, deceased
Yousef Dawas, deceased
Abdul Karim Hashash, deceased
Omar Abu Shaweesh, deceased
Martyrs everyone, Martyrs
Not once did they resist
the embrace of death
I ask them, do you know
that I am the sum parts
of the burnt sun of my
experience. That I lack
nothing. That I am flesh,
as they once were, but
also spirit. Also
of the soul world. That
I am love and so are you
Even when I was a child,
I was love like all the dead
Palestinian children are. I remember what people say and what they
did not say. I kept diaries
even then. I remember
how I did not talk back
The dead never talk back
They don't smile even
at oblivion, at the calamity that has
befallen them
I remember what they
smiled at. I remember.
War, sorry, I'm so sorry
Apologies in advance
I do not mean to raise
my voice, but I do have
something to say. This
is insane. The dead, well,
they want to live. They
want to bathe in the sea,
and eat watermelon on the beach.
I am sorry to hear that.
That you do not accept
this olive branch.I am still that
strangeness within me that found
the strength to grow.
I am, I was different.
The strangeness that found me
had peculiar interests (please see curiosities). Was always
lonely, upset, hurt, sensitive and
then suddenly one day I woke
up and I was a brave soldier
It is the last month of winter
All of us chilled to the wild bone within us. I had a picnic lunch today.
Bullets and bread and a reading
of Yevtushenko's Babi Yar
Yes, we have had rain. There are
signs that this is perhaps
the end of all of us. The end of western
civilization as we know it
Written in fragments of anonymity
Courageous anonymity.
There is something wrong here.
Something wrong with you
if you don't see that genocide
is wrong. The poem by a
Russian poet plays inside
my head. Babi Yar. The words
fill my head on repeat.
Yevtushenko tells me to fall
asleep but I don't listen. I write
poetry about the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict instead and
think of every life that was lost.