Status Updates From Forest of Noise: Poems

was meant to update a week ago 😭

I ask my son if he wishes to become

a pilot when he grows up.

He says he won’t wish

to drop bombs on people and houses.

At fifth grade, I visit the school library.

On a wall by the door, a poster claims,

“If you read books, you live more than one life.”

Now I’m thirty and whenever I look at faces

around me, old or young, on each forehead I read:

“If you live in Gaza,    you die several times.”