Gaza, My Heart
In the hush between the sirens,
a mother hums to keep fear still—
her lullaby, a trembling prayer,
amid the dust, the ache, the chill.
No bread today. The lines were long.
The sacks ran out by morning’s end.
A boy trades shoes for rice and salt—
a hunger no war could defend.
The pipes are dry. The nights are wild.
Hospitals choose whom they can save.
The market’s gone. The mosque is ash.
A schoolyard now becomes a grave.
Children draw with shattered chalk
on walls where once they traced the sun.
Their crayons crushed, their notebooks burned—
their childhood over, barely begun.
The olive trees still root and cling,
though limbs are lost and leaves are torn,
each branch a cry, each root a song
of generations not yet born.
And somewhere deep in hidden rooms,
where time stood still, and breath was thin,
hostages whispered lullabies—
some did not make it home again.
No final word, no last embrace,
just silence carved into the stone.
Their loss a weight that knows no side—
a wound the world must call its own.
A wedding dress still hangs in thread
behind a shuttered tailor’s door.
The seamstress fled. Her daughter wept.
She will not wear it anymore.
The sea still laps the broken shore,
indifferent to our battles won—
while seagulls wheel through smoke-stained skies,
as if the war had not begun.
The world debates with furrowed brows,
while bodies lie in open air—
and justice waits behind closed doors,
as diplomats rehearse despair.
What pain we stitch in others’ flesh
returns to haunt our children’s cries.
The blood that blinds our present grief
may one day blur our grandchildren’s eyes.
Oh Gaza, cradle carved in stone,
resilient flame that won’t rescind,
your soul outlives the cage of siege,
your hope the world must not rescind.
Let peace not be a stranger here,
nor justice just a passing sigh—
but a promise held in every tear,
until no more children have to die.
And may no captive breath be spent
in terror’s grip, in bitter end—
but all return, both near and far,
to find again what makes us friend.