I don’t see beauty where I used to

Photo by Mohamamd Mansour via Unsplash

The moon, glowing in full, still inspires awe

But then I wonder,

Can they see the moon in Gaza?

Or are the skies too choked with smoke?

Is its glow overpowered by the flashing of bombs?

I thought I caught a shooting star the other day,

just out of the corner of my eye

And while I asked myself whether it was really there

I also asked if Palestinians will ever find comfort

in a shooting star arcing across the sky like a

rocket

I can’t even look at birds and flowers

without seeing the olive groves in the West Bank

being set ablaze to starve the already starving

Or hear the sounds of children’s laughter

without hearing haunting echoes of

children crying out in fear and anguish and grief

But there is still beauty to be found

Listen to the voices of doctors harmonize

as they sing to comfort each other and

the patients they refuse to abandon

Watch the journalists as they comfort children

holding them tenderly between

the heartbreaking broadcasts they risk their lives

to deliver

Witness families making promises to each other,

Only death will keep me from your side ,

and strangers finding ways to comfort each other,

even as their homes are taken from them again,

quietly handing them warm cups of tea

Join the thousands upon thousands as they pool onto the streets,

connected only by anger, grief and love,

demanding to know,

If you said “Never again,”

why are we still screaming, “No More!”

I sit in a city in so-called peace,

as we eat each other alive for clicks, to entertain

and endear ourselves to wealthy puppeteers

asking myself, is love a lost cause?

But how can I give up on love

when in the face of true horror and ugliness

the people of Palestine only hold each other harder,

refusing to give up faith that one day

“Home” will become synonymous for “safety”?

And what is more beautiful than that?

Access our library of educational resources on Palestine