(For Reem, Tarek, and the Children of Gaza)
I kissed her,
but she wouldn’t wake up,
her tiny hand still warm in mine,
a doll, a dream,
a tangerine untouched by time.
Through broken stone and twisted steel,
through the ashes of a shattered dream,
I searched for voices,
for laughter,
for life,
but silence was all that screamed.
There, among the wreckage,
a doll — her doll —
I lift it gently to my lips,
hoping it might whisper back to me,
hoping some fragment of her joy
still clung to this broken thing.
How she giggled when she pulled my beard,
how I teased her pigtails in return,
the pact we made —
“I’ll let go, if you let go,”
two hearts bound by threads of simple love,
now torn apart by the weight of war.
She begged me that evening:
“Jiddo, can we go play outside?”
But outside was not a playground,
outside was a sky full of fire,
a ground that trembled with rage,
and I —
I, her protector —
said no.
She asked for fruit,
sweet as the laughter in her voice,
but there was no fruit left in Gaza,
only war,
only sorrow,
only a tangerine I had saved,
small and precious,
clutched now like a last prayer.
When the bombs came,
they didn’t knock at our door.
They came like thieves in the black night,
stealing breath,
stealing dreams,
crushing the world we built with lullabies.
I woke up to dust,
to darkness,
to the endless moan of broken hearts.
I screamed their names —
Reem!
Tarek!
My angels, my light!
But rubble answered me with silence.
They found them together,
brother and sister,
still and small beneath the stones,
as if even death could not tear them apart.
Now the walls that once heard their songs
lie heavy and cruel around us,
and every brick whispers their names.
Maysa — my daughter, their mother —
her voice broken by the weight of loss,
still hears their cries in her dreams.
She was pinned by the night,
buried by the sky’s betrayal,
unable to reach the child who called her name,
unable to save the life she had cradled in her arms.
At the hospital,
she hugged them,
hugged them with a mother’s desperate love,
trying to fill the void that nothing could ever fill.
No amount of kisses,
no amount of prayers,
could wake them now.
Only memories remain:
Reem in her yellow dress,
flowers in her hair,
laughing from the handlebars of my bicycle,
singing songs to the broken stars.
And me, an old man,
holding a doll and a tangerine,
in a world where no one should have to choose
between life and fruit,
between love and fear.
I kissed her,
but she wouldn’t wake up.
I kissed her,
and a piece of my soul turned to ash.
I kissed her,
and whispered to the broken night:
“I’m sorry, my darling.”
“I should have found a way to save you.”
And in the silence that answered back,
I understood —
our love, like our sorrow,
will echo across the ruins,
long after the world has forgotten our names.
