I Didn't Want to Write This

... but here we are again.

I’ve been wanting to write for a while but haven’t.
Haven’t had it in me to really try.

Like a suppressed appetite.
Like a lump of bubbling anger, choking me.

Because what’s the point?

What hasn’t already been said about the war?
About the people dying, the land being stolen, the bombs falling, the hearts thumping, the blood spilling, the dreams shattering, the homes disappearing, the childhoods vanishing, the traumas deepening, the parents trying, the homeless growing, the pregnant suffering, the elderly weakening, the country disintegrating?

What hasn’t already been said a month ago, a year ago, ten years ago?

History keeps repeating itself.
Or maybe the story never really ends.

We keep living on borrowed time.
In the interludes.
The in-betweens we’re sometimes granted, just waiting to be ripped away from our homes, our motherland, one way or another.
Over and over again.

Evicted from the womb.
Expelled.
In the most violent of ways.

We hang on.
We claw our way back.
We dig our nails in, refusing to let go.

Is this our crime?
Being too stubborn?
Too infatuated?
Too hopeful?
Too patriotic?
Too naive?

Till what end?
I don’t know.
For how much longer?
I don’t know.

—
Because what hasn’t already been said about the way your mind and body change when you hear the sound of missiles hitting buildings ten minutes away from you, leveling them in even less time?

Of warplanes rumbling so loud above you, you think they’re about to tear through your ceiling.

You lie in bed.
You shake.
You tremble.

You blast rain sounds to drown out the horror you know must be unfolding outside.
You try to convince yourself, trick yourself, it’s just sounds, it’s just sounds,
but your mind races anyway. Your body knows better.
And you know.

You know that behind every window, on every floor, in every bedroom, someone, just like you,

someone.
just.
like.
you.

just lost everything.

Obliterated.
Gone.
Killed.

Your body doesn’t forget this.
It stores it.
In every cell.

So when a car exhaust goes off,
or a door slams too hard,
you’re back there again.
In that bed.

Shaking.
Trembling.

—
What hasn’t already been said about being pregnant through all of this?

Me last year.
My friends this year.

Women carry life,
and men in power do everything in theirs to take it away.

I look at my children and I want to cry.
Want to protect them from it all, want to cup their ears and cover their eyes
and put them back inside me,
because it’s too much.
It’s too much when you let yourself think about it too much.
So, you don’t.
You bury it.
Another grave in the cemetery you carry inside you,
where parts of you are easier to lose than to feel.

It feels like the only way to survive.

Still, I put the youngest in bed between us.
I drag the oldest’s mattress into our room.

It’s fireworks.
It’s thunder.
It’s the garbage truck.

It’s anything but what it is.

What else can I do?

—
I’ve been wanting to write for a while.

And now that I’ve finally let it out,
I feel even more tired.

Because what hasn’t already been said,
and explained,
and shown,

to those who don’t know,
those who’ve never known,
those who will never know,
those who don’t care to know,
what it’s like to live through this?

We write it down.
We scream it.
We show the images.

And it never feels like enough.
It is never enough.

I still don’t know what the point is.

But my body needed somewhere to put this.

So here it is.