In gaza
There is no escaping the constant barrage of bullet and bombs
There is no water
No food or No fuel
No electricity for hospitals desperately trying to care for their wounded
no place to safely lay the bodies of their fallen
no guarantee any will survive long enough to pray over and bury their dead
So Palestinian’s of all ages are posting last wishes and farewells on twitter, Instagram, queering the map
they say: they will not be pushed out of what little they have left
they say: they wish to live long enough to fall in love
to bear children who grow old enough to bear and raise their own
they tell us their names and their dreams, their secrets, and regrets
I read as many as I can until the blue light of my phone begins to blur my vison
Hours later I am awoken to the sound of my daughter crying
She has been shaken awake by the sound of military helicopters
hovering over her bedroom
The buzz of the blades makes the crayons on her desk shiver
The meaning is clear
So long as American money and war planes can reach
the very edge of this globe
None of us are safe
I cover her in a faded pink blanket
My mind flases to the image of parents searching for their children
under blood soaked sheets
I shake like the crayons on the desk and press the image out of my mind
Say a prayer of pale over her body
Wisper in her ear, I am here my love
You are not alone
In the very moments that the edges of empire and its violence are expanding
I hold my daughter against my chest
Across the globe, Netanyahu and his war mongering friends drop 6,000 american missiles in a territory ¼ the size of our island
Gaza clings to its body of Palestine, like an ʻōpihi against a rock
barraged by the shore break
This is a century’s long genocide escalating before our eyes
We are standing in the orchestra pit amid the crescendo
The percussion of violence has continued beyond its own breaking point
But the composers and their musicians are still pulling at their strings:
it is 3am when my daughter finally drifts back off to sleep
& I am thinking about the visibility of violence in our digital world
I am facing the fact of our privilege
That I can make her feel safe
In a world where securities are made manifest by the twisted destiny of empires
The guilt of this “gift” we never asked for
Carries me back to sleep beside her
But The rest will not last
The next morning we wake to the news that israel
Has bombed yet another hospital
While I was holding my sleeping daughter
Other Parents run for cover with their lifeless children in their arms
I read the updates while the American national anthem
spills into our living room
We are caught in the 8am routine of empire here in Wahiawā
The daily salute to war and privilege and waste
The bugle shakes the last of our birds free from our trees
Soon The sound of kuahine will be overwhelmed by a new rain, the M16s
On the nights when the sounds of war games shake our livingroom
I play The Black Pumas on vinyl to drown out the sound of drumming riffles
Each cracking munition takes my mind to Palestine
We live in the stolen training ground of empire’s muscle
The tip of their imperial spear
I have known this for years
Perhaps it is what made me a poet in the first place
But seeing the images of the murdered caught under this weight in real time
Has made me something altogether different
So today I am reaching for new language
While I am fighting every instinct to look away
from the children and their beloved burned, shot, and hollowed
Their homes and sanctuaries crumbling around them
I know At the very least they are deserving of our witness and our indurance
So I watch, I keep my eyes wide fucking open
But In these moments I have no sign or solution,
So Instead, I am standing in my small corner of our world with a mirror
I am singing all the freedom songs I know
First in a whisper, then in a scream
I am sharing the news with my two-year-old daughter during breakfast,
and bath time
Becasue I need her to know
Why the Palestinian boy crying is to reporter about his cousin being shot down in the street
So I tell her
The sounds of war that she hears daily do not exists in a vacuum
I tell her. that she is connected to him,
this beautiful & grieving Palestinian boy
I send a prayer that his parents are holding him, alive, tonight too
In my dreams I imagine them both safe
Harvesting kalo and olives in our backyards
Drinking clean water, directly from our streams
Lips sticky with laughter, citrus, and lihing mui
When I dream, I see them as kin
Not just by the sibling shelling they hear in the morning light
No
My daughter must know
that his home and the terror brought upon it and him
Could be hers
That in fact, it already is
She must face it
She cannot look away
It is ours
It is her generations inheritance
