by Zahraa’ Raadhiya Khaki
After
When the world shattered
Into shards of stone-lode
That we wore around our necks
Fields charged with the blood
We called mother
Land
A puzzle floating
Heavylight as clouds
And her children
Fixing the rubble
We always drifted
Before we were and are
When there was still a road without checks
From the river to the sea, a oneness unsliced
And one that became
Discovered Frontiered Bordered Claimed Conquered Secured Raptured Colonised
Broked
Into that piece she never met
-48 pieces from the puzzle box handed down by hands stained with soil fertilised red-
But twines around her throat
Her breath
Land-chain
Frees some part of her
A sapling in dystopia that they made all those book movies about when I was 14 with those white actresses given label struggle symbol freedom fighter revolutionary and three fingers held to mouth then air -now two fingers a V from a not white child gray pushed forth from the remains born again from the رحم of resistance
Drinking from the roots of her mother
A hibakujumoku
An olive tree
Because sometimes
Doves become phoenix
The blood is not mine
But the chain is around my throat
And the sapling is my niece, my sister
Because perhaps
Before we drifted
When we were one
Our blood
Was Palestine.
Note: رحم – womb in Arabic