When Conflict Continues - Give Me The Keys
Gaza isn’t ‘out there’ any more.
It’s in my kitchen
in my pantry, my fridge
in my car
our cosy beds
filling the space between my kids’ skin on my skin.
It’s at school drop off.
It’s in my kitchen.
Clean drinking water pours freely
and my heart twists with unease.
Squeezing tight for all the faces I’ve seen
begging for water.
It’s in my pantry and my fridge
every time I hear ‘mum, I’m hungry’
- it’s nothing for me to assemble food
to fill their glorious, growing bellies.
And yet, the instant ache of a gutpunch I feel
for all the adults of Gaza –
no longer only mothers and fathers –
there can’t be enough of those left –
but anyone old enough to hear those words
and want desperately to provide
but who also have nothing to offer.
It’s in my car
where the hardest thing I navigate is driving cautiously
over speed humps
so the steel drink bottle at my daughters lips
doesn’t find her teeth.
I look back at her, something shifts and my bloodstream is frozen
thinking about precious 6yo Hind in her car.
They are the same age - the girl in my backseat
and the preious, beautiful girl that spent
her last 12 days on this earth – trapped and afraid
away from her mother
and suffering for nothing.
Where do we put these unfathomable realities?
Because Hind wasn’t found ‘dead’ as Western media report,
she was found killed.
I’m furious and aching.
Gaza is tucking my littles into cosy beds
in peaceful places knowing
every child deserves this.
And I’m certain that every child could have this, if us adults could get our shit together.
How much guilt I feel that all I can do is write these words
and sign petitions, show up locally and help my own children.
The discomfort that it’s by sheer luck my own kids
have no sense of fear in their hearts
while so many equally precious littles
walk around broken and shaken.
Even if they do survive, they’ll be lost for their lifetime.
How many of us are wishing and willing our arms
could somehow be long enough
to reach them.
Gaza is in the sweet skin-to-skin touch of my kiddos cheek on my cheek
Tiny soft faces on my face.
Their love and vitality is so close. So intense and precious and sacred.
But it meets ripping grief for
the thousands of children and mothers – entire linage lines
whose warm cheek will never meet warm cheek again in this life.
Miracles and beauty and joy. Severed. For nothing.
The shudder of what it must be
to press yourself against the sweet cheek of a baby
and find it cold.
None of it is right.
Gaza is at the school drop
where my biggest worry is that it will be hot today and
I hope they drink enough. Get enough shade.
It all seems so pathetic. To worry
when they are held in such a state of safety.
My children are at school today
to learn and grow and play.
No one lives and dies using schools as shelters
in the streets of my world.
But the haunting knowledge of Gaza’s schools fills my body.
How is everyone not crushed by the weight of it?
The ballooning gratitude I feel for the safety and simplicity of my own life
mixes and merges with profound grief and injustice.
Right now,
that very sense of safety and simplicity
is being obliterated,
intentionally severed
on mass scale
And I don’t know where to put that.
I don’t know where to put that
And I’m done with asking ‘Where the hell are we supposed to put this?’
The depth of rage
for ‘leaders’ who aren’t leading at all.
I want to scream
GIVE ME THE FUCKING KEYS.
Give me the keys to all the powerful places
where all the powerful decisions get made
and I will give them to the courageous.
Redistribute power to those who’ve
retained their humanity in the face of complicity.
Give the keys to those who ache to end this otherworldly horror.
Give me the keys to all the positions of power
I’ll give them to the people genuinely ready
to choose compassion and humanity
over whatever ridiculous thing it is that has led to your silence.
This breaking and severing needs to STOP.
Gaza is in my living room.
It’s everywhere I go and everything I see.
Give me the fucking keys.
I’ll give them to leaders worthy of the privilege.