"هل صار بوسعي أن أموت الآن، أم أنتظر؟"​

I write so tales don’t end
            so war ends
I must write
not for anything but
            to keep my emotions awake
            to retain my humanity
                                   ***
My mother never taught me tatreez
            the embroidery of my bleeding pain
            from a cassette of memory
but she taught me
            the language of the proletariat
                        the downtrodden
            the chase after bags of flour
                                   ***
I learned relinquishment early
I turned away from
            the face of God
and grasped the hand of my lover
            asking for forgiveness…
            leaning my head on her shoulders
            like a downcast tree
                        weighed down by absence
                                  by massacres
Then I spoke to her
            about my dreams
                                     crushed
                                     drowning in rot
I spoke gently

                                     very gently
about how we can weave
                        from cotton clouds and almond trees
                                  butterfly socks and publishing houses
            convert prisons
                        jails
                        torture chambers
                                  to fields and gardens and songs
                        arms factories
                        monsters
                        beards
                                 to cinema houses and theaters and taverns
tanks
                        crawlers
                        temples
                                 to jewelry and earrings for women
                                 and windowsills of dried fruit
                          marked for sale
and how her trembling lips
                        with their deep cascading springs
            can make food out of bombs
and the emptiness within me
            a nest for birds
                                    ***
I am now alone in the room
            gnawing my fingernails
            smoking marijuana
            taking sertraline
                        and antidepressants
            to end the cries of a man
                        whose voice crept
                        through the keyhole
                        all morning
            Delirious
                        calling strange names
            saying,
                        I am a flock of the dead
                        searching for a woman
                        who smells of apples
                        with hair flowing
                        like a valley of flowers
                        running from her darkness
                        behind the moon
                        Have you seen her?!
but even if he tires of chasing
            after rubble
                        and departs
who will stop
            the knives
                        piercing my head?!
                                   ***
I wrote of war as I lived it
            not as others watch it
I wrote of love as I dream of it
            not as others live it
I forcibly fulfilled my duties in life
            not as others fulfill theirs
I endured the city’s most dreadful deaths
                        its most painful loss
                        its most horrible nightmares
                          awake
I contemplated the border fences
            with fever kneaded eyes
                          glimpsing my freedom
                          a loaf of bread and electricity poles
                          victims of slow starvation
                          crushed below the debris of their homes
                          burned alive
I dipped my fingers
            in a platter of misery
            and savored it
                          like a reluctant bird
I sang for the homelands
                          barefoot
I invented new ways
                          to kiss
                          to walk above the haze
I danced for clouds
            and lemon trees
            and sea waves
And yet…
            the bullet prevailed
                          etching on my body maps
                          of mines and displacement
                          uttering me like the sea pronounces
                                                                        its dead waves