Bones from Gaza

A man from Gaza,

a dry frame, bones clattering against each other as if asking:

"Am I alive? Or has death forgotten to take me?"‪.

Eyes wide open…

not to life, but to a bitter astonishment,

the astonishment of the hungry when they find not even death to satisfy them.

It is not clear:

Is this gaze from hunger?

Or from silent oppression like our graves?

Or from a fear suspended between the sky and the ceiling?

Or from a disappointment deeper than the siege?

Disappointment with the world, with justice,

with everything you call "humanity."

The man does not cry...

Because tears are a luxury, and water is scarce,

and because crying in Gaza is a luxury only the living can afford.

Oh world:

Do you hear? Do you feel?

This one collapsing before us was not a beggar,

he was a father, he was a teacher, he was a human being,

but you ignited genocide,

you closed the crossings,

you left him to become a skeleton stripped of everything but dignity,

Oh world,

do you understand what it means for bones to become a banner of protest?

For the gaze of the hungry to be more eloquent than all your parliaments?

For disappointment to become a face that does not close its eyes,

even after death?

A man from Gaza…

did not die from a shell,

nor from lack of food,

but from an excess of lies,

from a global silence more impactful than all explosions,

a skeleton from Gaza, not only falling today from hunger,

but from betrayal.

If I returned alive,

I would not demand food,

but one question:

Why does all this death need permission to be condemned?

And why do we alone need to die so much?

For us to be called human,

My bony body is Gaza now,

I died of hunger, but not because food was absent,

but because you closed the roads,

and turned the siege into a trade,

and invested death in the economy of extermination,

hunger in Gaza has become a heavy industry,