Rifqa

by Mohammed El-Kurd

We are made up by those we love, and it is by our relationships with people that we are transformed.

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

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

These words remind me that home is a series of shared memories, not brick and mortar. Home is where we go to remember and revisit who we’ve always been.

“The most tragic of disasters are those that cause laughter.”

If hearing about a world other than yours makes you uncomfortable, drink the sea, cut off your ears, blow another bubble to bubble your bubble and the pretense. Blow up another town of bodies in the name of fear.

“Anger is a luxury we cannot afford.” Be composed, calm, still—laugh when they ask you, smile when they talk, answer them, educate them.

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

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

“No matter how deep it drowns, the truth always washes ashore.”

Here, we know two suns: earth’s friend and white phosphorus. Here, we know two things: death and the few breaths before it. What do you say to children for whom the Red Sea doesn’t part?

If I squeezed their bread in my hand, my blood would drip out of it.

I sit on the bus and wait for my fangs to grow.