Rifqa

by Mohammed El-Kurd

Solidarity is a feeling and a doing. It is a series of choices we make with one another. It can only be felt. It cannot be contrived or manipulated. Solidarity is not just about our shared pain or struggle but also, most importantly, about our shared joy, visions, and dreams. It is an energetic force and a resounding love.

We are more than what was done to us; we are who we’ve become in spite of it all.

Birth lasts longer than death. In Palestine death is sudden, instant, constant, happens in between breaths.

The liberation chants outside the hospital room told my mother to push.

This is why we dance: Because screaming isn’t free.

Please tell me: Why is anger–even anger–a luxury to me?

A soldier as old as a leaf born yesterday pulls a trigger on a woman older than his heritage.

even when I lied and held on even when I lied and was made to hold on

I cried—not for the house but for the memories I could have had inside it.

This is a refuted revolution.

I told the people that day, disclaimer: dead girl shouldn’t have found her rage in the kitchen drawer.

A woman tells him a pen is a sword. What’s a pen to a rifle? Another fed him a sonnet. If Shakespeare was from here he wouldn’t be writing.

A riot unfolds inside her throat: poetry made of cuss words and drums.

These people make me feel in third person.