Forced to leave at gunpoint
Leave your home
Separate from family
Either to a refugee camp
or an open air prison
Year after year
Hoping to come back home
With a key on your neck
A key that looks dull but is truly glistening
Waiting to be used to open its door after many years
Waiting for the rotation that unlocks a world that existed once
With tall olive trees
A calm mediterranean breeze
Without the constant stress of survival
Unfortunately its door is long gone
The world is much changed
Your home replaced by something else
Something devoid of serenity
Devoid of any sense of charm
A nightmare disguised as a country
A nightmare with impunity
A nightmare that is unbelievably lucid
Year after year
The bombs continue to rain
An endless flurry of missiles
A consistent stench of wreckage and death
Humans buried by rubble
Toys suffocated by the debris
A doll without a head
Unable to escape the airstrikes
Unable to be played with
Unable to be hugged
Unrecognizable
Without a child to comfort
Left to rot as people reel from the impact
Constantly too stunned by the scale of destruction
The scale of misery able to be afflicted
Year after year
More friends dead
More family dead
More children without parents
More parents without children
Children whose skin has been stained
Stained black from white phosphorous
Stained black like the asphalt on the roads they are forbidden to go on
Stained by the fact they were born on the wrong part of the planet for people to care
Year after year
Leaders don’t mention you
They negate your humanity
They continue to ignore your plight
They’d rather fund your eradication
Let your destruction go unchecked
Worse they allow it
Ignoring the homes wrecked
Ignoring the water poisoned
Ignoring the schools shattered
Ignoring the separate roads
Ignoring the checkpoints
ignoring you
You’re told to leave home
So you don’t get caught in crossfire
What home
Where to
Whose fire
This is hell
Worse it is an eternal hell
They tell you this is deserved
Years of occupation
Years of apartheid
Years of slaughter
Years of genocide
The constant Nakba
What did you do?
smile?
grieve?
die.
So when they tell you to leave when you have nowhere to go
You tell them you’ve had enough
You stay and fight as you have nothing left
Nothing but a burning desire for emancipation
A desire that after year after year
You will be free
Resources to Help
Palestinian American Medical Association: https://palestinian-ama.org/campaign/show/13/crisis-fund
Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund: https://www.pcrf.net/
Islamic Relief:https://irusa.org/middle-east/palestine/