IT'S ALL WATER

New Paragraph

I never realized how much I love my people

until I saw them diced and hung for mass consumption on smartphones

burying fleshy bits that they thought might be their children

I never realized how beautiful our men are

until I saw them carry a woman out from under the rubble

covering their eyes to spare her any indignity

I never realized how much my body ached for the company of my people 

until I heard the muezzin cry out and I heard it

I heard it from here, we all did

moon people

That cry was soaked in sorrow and decades of oppression 

it echoes as all our children and all our people are lined up to die

by murderous empty fiends, thieves

thieves who can never eat their fill, gorging on counting our dead 

killing fields

I never realized what our women were made of

until I saw them stand, dust everywhere, chemical warfare 

tears in their eyes, their wombs scream, tethered to the sky 

index finger raised 

every one of them a Queen, she said

He is the disposer of my affairs

It made my limbs shudder

I never realized how beautiful our children are

when they recite the words they just memorized 

tin cans for shoes, flooded tents and torn socks

dancing and singing our folk songs, brightly coloured birds

I never realized how utterly stunning we are 

as a people

as a community 

as a nation without borders

our index finger since we were seven, sometimes even five

the connection between the vertical and all of us

the cube, the circumnavigation, Abraham's House

the moon and the stars

lunar calendars, circles, crescents and this vast vast

ocean within us

the sun and its way, how shadows lean at mid afternoon prayer

the beauty is so much it exhausts me to think 

it's unbearable

it's water