GAZA

By Kiran Masroor

Gaza did not destruct for us to watch.
The way the word Gaza stays in the back of the throat.
I didn’t know I loved Gaza until it became so small.
Small as a word in a sentence. We fit such enormous things
into our mouths and expect that the meaning still comes through.
You cannot say a country’s name over and over until it is
reduced to the last bitter syllable. You cannot condense a million lives
and strain them and slice them and dice them and season them.
You cannot fit every angle into the words you say.
You cannot hold the beating love story of every citizen
and move the camera to their feet and catch
the smirk when they turn the alleyway onto the main road.
You cannot capture the slap of their soles
or the bend of their ankles as they run. If you could grab
a pitcher full of water but the pitcher was as big and impossible
as the moon and you poured it all onto the page until
the water became an ocean and the faces of every
loved thing resurfaced, maybe then
you could approach the entirety of things—
the young boy splashing his face with water,
standing beside the others as prayer begins,
thinking about the girl he loves,
and the girl in the waiting room of a clinic
tapping her foot against the floor,
and the wind outside, rearranging dust,
carrying footprints to sea.

Kiran Masroor is a rising junior at Yale University where she studies Neuroscience and Evolutionary Biology under the pre-medical track. On campus, she is involved in TEETH Slam Poetry, Timmy Global Health, and Yalies for Pakistan. Her poetry appears in such publications such as the New York Quarterly, the Connecticut Literary Anthology, and the Yale Global Health Review.

Photo credit: Peter Tkac via a Creative Commons license.

Note from Writers Resist: If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.