Rafah Burns as i hold my sleeping son

Rafah burns, and I hold my sleeping son

I look at the pictures 

Of children 

Their smiling faces torn from the bone 

Their laughter evacuated  

I watch the videos of burning tents, of flesh floating in the wind 

I watch them 

While I hold my sleeping son on my chest 

I feel something like rage 

Something like love 

Something like fear

And Shame 

And outrage 

but this feeling is all this and still something different 

Something far beyond my emotional vocabulary 

I am a poet without language 

An empath without root 

I am overflowing in something I do not recognize 

Something like terror

But still not quite that 

I am holding my sleeping son 

And a man I will never know

But love all the same 

Holds up an infant corpse  

His beautiful face 

Has been carried off with the last of our humanity 

Before I can catch myself I let out a wail 

And The sleeping baby in my arms jerks himself awake

And now he cries with me 

For Palestine 

For the uprooted olive trees

For the shelled hospitals & schools & homes 

For the thousands of children 

Their parents and loved ones martyred 

In a smoldering flame 

Their fathers who gather the severed limbs 

      Like flowers 

Mothers who catch their drifting ashes like      

       sand caught in a gust of terror

My son and I are here 

Under an occupation a whole world away 

The flames of Rafah smolder before us 

I can feel the heat crackling in my blood 

And so we — my son and I — 

     fill this silent world with our wails  

Both Feeling something we can’t quite name