Nobody Likes A Political Poem
In Gaza, there is no more mama, no more bread, no more water, no more light. No more home. No more family. No help even coming.
But because I am white and American and can stand in my kitchen eating bread and watching the Santa Ana’s lift the branches slightly on the loquat tree, because I can run hot water and scrub the yogurt out of my daughter’s clothes, because I can make coffee, and because sometimes I still get to read, I start thinking of having another baby.
Don’t look away. The call comes all across the world.
When I dream of my ex-boyfriend he is always carrying a knife.
Sleep becomes harder and harder to come by. Fall here and on the west side the leaves begin to change and drop.
My ex-boyfriend’s current girlfriend posts something to her Instagram, a ring around her face, and I want to look but I can’t. Because I’ve never been able to fully let go of anything, I became a writer.
At 4 am a brush fire breaks out in the park on the hill across from our home. There are helicopters, but limited water. The cat waking me.
Because I am white and American, and people have to ask me if I am Jewish, I can’t seem to get clean.
And it seems almost futile to write about anything else. The mountains so sharp in the distance, this morning.
I can’t look away.
A baby’s hand coming out of the rubble.
My daughter now says hand arm thumb. When I pull her pajamas over her head. Surprises us when she says the titles of her favorite books, Home For A Bunny, Mama and Baby, Down By The Seashore taking them off the shelf. Goodnight Gorilla. Waking at 5:30 am. The sky at least light then so we are still stumbling up to her but at least now not in the dark.
When I told my therapist I couldn’t see a future, she said The great thing about that is you now get to imagine one. A new one.
And I had lied when I said couldn’t see a future, because I could see my daughter - long and beautiful, her eyes still big, wind blown, salt watered, tanned and smiling. On the beach. Eating strawberries. Alive, so alive in a sweater slightly too big for her. Changing out of her swimsuit in the sand.
And so I try to hold on to that.
I try to count my blessings. To do what I can.
same same thank you love you