Tell

Tell Them
Tell your children
how tents were set ablaze
by Israeli drones, how the bodies
of Palestinian children
lay like rag dolls—
limbs scattered, their chests split
like overripe fruit.
Lips sealed with blood,
their shrouds kissed
a thousand times.

Tell them,
in your own words,
with your religious faith,
your political beliefs,
that we did not know enough.
That it was complicated.
That we feared losing jobs,
promotions, our journalist status,
investments, loans, peace of mind.

Tell them.
Tell your children
how hunger spread like wind,
frontiers closed like tombstones.
Tears started fading
as their endless night became years.
How a mother cleaned a spectacle of dust
from her young daughter’s cheek,
when shrapnel and bullets
emptied her lungs.
and her ponytail
once brushed
for life, lay still

Tell them.
Tell your children
we did nothing.
That we turned off the news,
kept our phones switched on
only for banter, laughter,
occasional dates—
while Palestinian families vanished
like the map of Palestine.
They will never walk home,
never take the shortcut
with groceries in hand,
never greet the same neighbours
outside their homes

Death in Gaza is...

Tell them.
Tell your children
you never wrote to MPs.
Never signed petitions.
Never spoke of Palestine.
That 60,000 lives
were just a number—inaccurate.
That genocide, holocaust,
are words for history books.
That we all bear a cross.
Tell them
we cried when we watched genocides on TV,
that we wiped our tears
with soft tissues
and renewed our Sky subscription.

Tell them.
That Israeli bombs
turned Gaza to dust,
and now only the sand screams.

Tell them.
Tell your children
there are no hospitals left.
That bare hands clamp wounds,
bullets dug out with nails.
No water. No bread.
Only explosions
lighting the sky before darkness swallows all.
Tell them of Gaza’s children—
Tell them of the children in Gaza
with no arms, no legs,
disfigured by fire,
blind and mute,
without mothers, without siblings —
but one day,
they will walk into schools.
They will stand in courts.

Tell them.
That we were busy.
That we had no time.
That we carried so much
on our shoulders.
That we had to protect our own.
That we couldn’t bear
to watch more suffering.

Tell them.
Our children won’t ask why.
They’ll look at us with horror—
and turn away.