Stray Bullet
A collection of eight poems that question notions of mercy and identity formation when children casually die on the streets and under tents. Vices rain upon a society stripped of its being, flayed before international onlookers, and grasping at some distant form of mercy while making every effort to survive. In a land where even prayers are banished from taking root, souls exist like stars without a sky.
Letter to the Reader
Here, in Gaza, dreams are shattered before they are born.
Here, from the city of death, I write to you to feel life.
From the city of misery, I write to you with hope.
Here, from Gaza, I write to you with the ink of my hand.
Maybe my trace will spread in a heart or even in the streets of the city.
I write to you to leave a trace that makes a fleeting smile.
I write to you so that my fragrance will spread to the sky.
Here from Gaza, where there is war and destruction – I write.
May peace spread throughout the countries of the earth.
Excerpt from “Stars Without a Sky”
My stars have no sky.
It rains tears.
Unintelligible cries of anger rain down on us.
Who are we?
Why couldn’t we win at chess?
It rains fear.
Children drown in the famine of tents.
I realized that I have no soul to separate me from these realities.
Stuck...
between a present that
obstructs my vision and a
dream I cannot see
and a lover whose simplicity I
do not know
and why he loves me,
and how he loves me.
I am stripped of all existence.
In my soul, a girl lost in
features
unknown identity.
Sample Illustration
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