Mothers give birth underneath a cypress tree,

Teaching her babies the symbiotic language,

Learned by her ancestors.

A life cycle of inheritance, from fertile lungs.
Her faith is a penumbra that falls over her,

Folding verses into her palms, a kind of love daughters inherit.

Curious gaze, cross-stitching the Bethlehem star on her dress.

Sister plucks moons from the sky,

Threading light into Tatreez.
They carry the heart of their homes on their sleeve. 
Ancestral craft is more magic than poetic,

Gathering knowledge from grandmothers.

Women creating, women preserving.

 Stories from finger to needle, 
Like heart to womb. 
The breath of the land lives her veins.

Young girl grows into the iambic pentameter beneath her feet,

She is the metaphor of her country’s heart.

An archive between Yaffa and Haifa.
In remembering a nation, honour the women.

Plestia writes about Gaza in her journals, people as survivors and warriors.

Rafeef in poetry; we teach life, sir.

The little girl with a mic, Lama in her oversized PRESS vest.

Sidra.

Hind.

Inheritors stolen. 
All braver than soldiers who trample on stolen land,

Waving guns towards a tender sky, feigning ownership of a land he claims to love–
A lover would never plant checkpoints where olives grow,

Ungathering the seeds with one bullet.

A lover would never starve a land that feeds them.

A lover would never tear apart communities. 
Christians stand outside the mosque,

arms linked, protecting the prayers as the soldier preys on them.

They won’t show you this kinda love.

Celestial, communal, congregational.

A testimony to their apathy. 
Girls starve, women speak to senseless leaders through screens.

Hey everyone, it’s Bisan from Gaza, and we’re still alive.

Montages of rubble, collages of collapsed hospitals.

Babies born with ribcages protruding under their skin. 
–Playback to beaches and farms. Walking through wheatfields.
Ceasefire, Cease–

Fire.

Ceasefire.

CEASEFIRE. 
For the young girls who simply want to be, and deserve to be.

Deserve to spread their wings from the kohl in their eyes,

To the butterflies in their stomach, after finding love. 
For the girls that are soft spoken, the hot-headed,

The academics, the do or do-not darers, the daydreamers,

The courageous, standing up to soldiers.

The adventurous, the coffee lovers, tea drinkers.

All resistance.
Human.

Not collateral damage or consequence.

Colonial interference, settler colonial violence.
What about our future leaders?

Mothers give birth under a grey sky,

Babies breathe smoke.

Her lungs bleed,

Still awaiting.