PART III: THE LOCKED DOOR

The straw that broke the camel’s back.
The lethal blow that made his resilience crack.
Think, analyse the commensurate reaction to his fate;
Paralysed and desperate, in his own words.

‘Asphyxiated’ seems like such a clean word;
‘He died of asphyxiation,’ that’s what the articles wrote.
What about dying of starvation? Let me elaborate on this note –
I meant, dying from being starved of hope.
I hardly think one ‘asphyxiating’ does this justice.
How about ‘a sense of debilitating hopelessness’, instead?
Or maybe ‘hopelessness that feels like all-encompassing dread?’

Because that’s what all of Gaza feels right now.
How? How the **** did we get here?
Year after year, Palestinians die and suffer.
Fear after fear, they come alive, one after the other.
‘We’re dead, already’ –
How does reading something like that not make you feel unsteady?

So, what do you do after suffering like that?
Nothing, except for lying down flat on your bed,
Crying, watching everybody around you dying.
And then, when you can’t cry anymore,
When you realise your entire country was treated like an eye sore,
When you can’t take it anymore,
That’s when you lock the ******* door.
That’s when Asma broke through that door,
To find her prodigal son dead, collapsed on the floor.