Dear friend, I hope it is not cold above,
and you rest on a blessed bed of silk.
Everything binds me as a slave
to loathing after your unfair end.
The bombs silenced your final words,
and your wish vanished in the expanse of the unknown.
It has dissipated with a dandelion’s delicate wisp
in a gunpowder-scented breeze.
Your soul glimmers across
the vast black weave of heaven.
The sky is wrapped with anguished prayers,
but your wish fell victim to the drones’ might,
and the tanks pilfered the hope
from our tear-filled shrines,
leaving us lamenting.
The roads echo with the absence
of knocking shoes and women’s exultant heels.
I wander among abandoned houses,
asking beggars and passersby near the rubble
if they caught sight of a stray wish meandering around.
By the boardwalk, opposite the sea's vast span,
I witnessed a swallow dancing in the wind.
This is your soul, which I recognize
by its mischievous feathers,
stilling the windmills of our misery.
As your soul arrives every spring,
with my birthday candle's gleam,
I will celebrate with a silent stream of tears.
And every April in the mist,
I will mourn your faded last wish.
Haya Abu Nasser is a human rights activist and writer whose family is originally from Deir-Sneid. She earned a bachelor’s degree in English literature and humanitarian sciences, and works for several non-governmental organizations in Palestine. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in AGNI, Scoundrel Time, Mizna, Evergreen Review, The Rumpus, and Guernica. She is currently internally displaced within Gaza.
Photo credit: Kev (Pixabay)