Yesterday, Thirteen
I will eat
both oranges now
because I am home;
I will throw
their bending peels down
Gaza's drain where they
won’t break glass, send
shards flying, activate
the sirens, pull down
concrete blocks onto
rows of shattered cars. I’ll sit
on the floor of the room
against the wall with
my wet dripping oranges
like I sat with my brother
wet-dripping in my hands
against the limestone wall
unable to walk unable
to breathe in the
pillows of dust in the
rubble of our town,
in the shops, in the
market, on the bus
with my brothers
and blood soldiers
and my father now
silent and dead, his
head and legs broken into
the bones of a would-be
nation, buried in a cotton-
covered silence made
of gravel dust,
buried again today
by the awful
graveled silence
of the rest
of the world.
