And lo — Gaza’s ramparts are fallen,
its gates devoured by flame,
its streets turned to rivers of dust and blood.
Children lie folded like prayers unanswered,
and mothers gather ashes as if they were bread.
O roaming wind — doesn’t it matter to you?
You pass over bones warm from the sun
do you not shiver?
Do you hear me, wandering wind?
Do Iris haynei bloom again—
in this land where the sun bleeds
through roofs like an unhealed wound?
I ask you, wind,
who roam in search of a bough to rest,
a twig to swing on—
what song do you carry from the ruins?
They say the iris will bloom again,
even when the soil smells of iron
and bread burns before it rises.
Its roots remember what the dead forget:
how to wait.
I have learned to count not stars, but craters.
Each one a mouth, open and unsung.
My brother’s marble rolled into one once—
and the silence never stopped rolling.
The walls around me stutter
with holes that used to be windows.
A bicycle lies folded under stone,
its bell a frozen laugh.
The air hums with prayers
that lost their way home.
Blood dries faster than tears here.
Yet sometimes, after the storm,
puddles bloom like mirrors—
and I see our faces shimmer,
half earth, half heaven,
all waiting.
Mother’s hands still smell
of smoke and milk.
She folds silence into my pocket,
a currency for the sleepless night.
We walk between walls
that remember laughter
the way graves remember names.
And still—
beneath this ash,
something green is whispering.
The iris hums in its buried cradle,
purple veins pulsing
like the heartbeat of a forgotten lullaby.
It will rise—
not to accuse,
not to forgive,
but simply to exist again,
lifting its wounded petal to the light,
and call the shattered sky
hope.
