Margaret Rhee elegizes the Gaza dead in a prose poem of remarkable tenderness. Blending the personal and political, she questions “The difference between wound and womb…Palestinian and Israeli…You and me.”
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Day 0
I prayed for Gaza while you slept next to me. I prayed not like I was taught, but lying down, eyes opened, and through my teeth, so not to wake you.
In the night, I wake. I want to kiss you while gazing at the side of your face, but I don’t. You might wake and a dream should never be interrupted unless. More bombs dropped today, they said. Now, it’s Day 3, and more than 80 lives. I don’t pray for Gaza aloud, you might wake. All I want is your body underneath mine, my boulder, I pray because your breathing, reminds me why.
On the fifth day, I forgot to pray. But I woke in the middle of the night. I looked up for a while at the ceiling in our dark. More than 172 people have died now in Gaza. You were facing the wall. I rolled over to my side, and wrapped my arms and legs around your body to pray. You heaved a great sigh in your sleep. Then, you began to snore.
On the seventh day, more than 350 people died in Gaza. How can pain translate through a newsfeed? In the future, we should be able to step into the photographs, and feel. Haptic won’t cut it. Perhaps, feeling pain is the only way, we would want peace, and the only way, we would begin to pray. How does death look like? On the seventh night, you murmured and wailed in your sleep. I sang a soft song to you, and then held you to soothe you.
Your lips and hands know how to hold my wrists like so, how to hold my neck like so. Stay the night, because across the ocean and landmass and what we call borders, people are dying. More than 600 people died now in Gaza today. It is Day 14. I prayed for Gaza while you slept. I should’ve prayed for us too.
More than 1,000 people died in Gaza. It is Day 19. Today, I drove on the freeway. Red ripe tomatoes sunbathe on the entrance ramp. They will soon rot from the sun’s heat and car exhaust. I pass the tomato truck. In front of me, the garlic truck moves slow. Garlic skins flies through the wind and lands on my window. Skins easily discarded and disgraced. You said nothing while this was happening. I said nothing, too.
By day 27, more than 1,700 people have died. I prayed, lover. I prayed. I never told you this in the morning.
Ten years ago, I watched my father die a slow death. It was one that began, when he stopped eating, and his refusal for food lead to his diabetic collapse. Then, in the hospital, the stroke took him into a coma, and I never got to talk to him again. Before the coma, he grew so skinny in the hospital. He grew skinny without his permission. The nurse held his head as he began to whimper. His reluctance. When given a second chance, my dying father wanted to live.
The difference between wound and womb? Palestinian and Israeli? You and me?
A fruit fly rests in the crevice of the peach. I can smell the peach at an arm’s length. I want to shoo the fly away. I want to cut and feed you peach pieces before we sleep. A digestive act to ensure sweet dreams. Your body mapped against mine. Do not leave me in the night. Do not leave me when you close your eyes. Now, over 2000 people have died.
It began again because four young men were murdered. One burned and bludgeoned. Three shot. Here are their names and ages. Muhammad Abu Khdeir, 16, Eyal Yifrach, 19, Naftali Fraenkel, 16, and Gilad Shaar, 16. Let’s not take the back door here. Let’s say frankly that names matter, and that all lives matter, and borders have no place in prayer. The death count is lopsided. Why? Injustice exists and so must peace. We are human beings. I want to see images of a young man imprinted in me: his smooth face full of hope, and his crinkled smiling eyes of pleasure, and alive.
You were a young man once. I think you were about 17, leaning against the doorway of your childhood home. Seeing that old photograph is when I began to love you.
I mouth this to you and will you to wake. Hold my palms still together with yours.
Let us pray.
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