the last safe zone
A Poem by Sarah Manasrah
every mother’s throat
in the world
turned raw with rage
was not enough to stop them from
“evacuating” Al-Aqsa hospital in
the last “safe zone”
how many
babies burned to stone
are too many?
shredded worshippers?
pulverized homes?
how do we still say that
existence is resistance?
because
the adhaan’s bellow
is more powerful
than the air strike’s scar
because
the aurora blesses us with
A shimmering stroke of midnight
after months of suffocating clouds
because
the impossibly sapphire sea
pierced with mountainous teeth
has no beginning
no end
like Al-Ahad
(the one)
like the zeitoun’s curve
like the wail
of countless martyrs
when my eyes fill with glaciers
melted by revolution’s eruption
I know every cowardly nation
will drown
in our boiling blood
but this time,
no ark can save us
an empty,
burnt out incubator
the last thing
remaining on earth
indestructible in
its grief
Bio: When I'm not chasing after my 3 and 5 year old girls, I nurture movements for transformative justice and community care. I'm a devoted advocate, organizer, writer, and birth worker for abolition in every form. I’m part of a diverse diaspora family with 4 refugee generations — Jewish blended with Palestinian and Muslim (across the US, Chile, Argentina, Palestine, Jordan, and UAE). In my nonexistent spare time, I work on making the perfect iced coffee and keeping my plants alive!
