They stopped me at the checkpoint...
“Your ID,” they said.
I laughed.
Not because it was funny
but because it was old.
Old like blood.
I said:
My ID?
My ID is buried
under a broken door
in a house time forgot,
in Yafa…
with my grandmother,
and the coffee that went cold waiting for me.
That word I said
they didn’t split into two lines.
I split.
Half of me
was dragged by the hair
and hung on barbed wire
like a shirt washed in blood,
and the other half
they crushed under their boots
and said:
this is the extra.
One line
beats
not because it must,
but because it loves
the sound of flesh confessing.
The other line
asks me:
Where is your country?
I said:
In your mouth
but you bite it every day.
I screamed:
Palestine.
Not a name
a hemorrhage.
They tore me in two?
No
they turned me into nothing.
A number at the border,
a file with no voice,
a body
trained to break
before it arrives.
But listen
despite everything,
the half of me
buried in my grandmother’s hands
is still growing.
And when it returns…
it won’t ask for an ID.
It will ask:
Who is still standing?
Apr 1
Apr 1, 2026 at 2:04 AM UTC
They stopped me at the checkpoint...
“Your ID,” they said.
I laughed.
Not because it was funny
but because it was old.
Old like blood.
I said:
My ID?
My ID is buried
under a broken door
in a house time forgot,
in Yafa…
with my grandmother,
and the coffee that went cold waiting for me.
That word I said
they didn’t split into two lines.
I split.
Half of me
was dragged by the hair
and hung on barbed wire
like a shirt washed in blood,
and the other half
they crushed under their boots
and said:
this is the extra.
One line
beats
not because it must,
but because it loves
the sound of flesh confessing.
The other line
asks me:
Where is your country?
I said:
In your mouth
but you bite it every day.
I screamed:
Palestine.
Not a name
a hemorrhage.
They tore me in two?
No
they turned me into nothing.
A number at the border,
a file with no voice,
a body
trained to break
before it arrives.
But listen
despite everything,
the half of me
buried in my grandmother’s hands
is still growing.
And when it returns…
it won’t ask for an ID.
It will ask:
Who is still standing?
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