Still Hope

Still Hope

Every morning

I check my phone,

for news from Qaa-Al-Qurain,

just outside of Khan Younis,

because while I slept,

Mahmoud has tried to buy flour,

or diapers for his disabled brother,

or new clothes for his little sister

who had had none in 18 months,

or blankets,

or today, firewood,

at $50 a cord,

in order to bake the flour into bread.

Every trip to the shrinking market,

“black” in more ways than one,

means taking his life in his hands,

but really, that’s the case

virtually anywhere in Gaza,

at every moment;

waiting in line at a soup kitchen,

going to the hospital,

talking to a neighbor,

or just sitting inside your tent, trying to decide

if not letting your children outside to play

is like killing them in another way.

Living While Palestinian

is a crime, you see,

it is a terrorist provocation,

and we must not coddle terrorists,

with such indulgences as food,

clean water,

a safe place to shit.

I wake up to no message,

but the internet is bad there,

and it’s very hard to charge one’s phone.

He is most likely fine. Or not.

He and Nada and his mother and brothers

may have been buried under rubble

while they slept,

the newly purchased firewood

feeding the flames that consumed them.

If that was no nightmare I had last night,

but a vision of their final moments,

I can only pray they went

from one sleep to the next

without awakening.

To hope for instant death

is still hope, I guess.

MCO 2025