Going and grieving.
More going, less grieving.
More doing, always doing.
Grieving is a privilege—
a tall, blond, machine-gun-toting
TikToker privilege.
Grieving is a luxury for those
doling out pain
to the fighters that percolate it.
Grieving is a gift
afforded to the Marina-manicured
I grieve for grieving—
grasping, going, doing,
organizing, writing, balancing—
dry-eyed doing.
Grieving is for blue-eyed counter-protesters
who bring abundant affliction
or for the manipulators: who use water, always.
I grieve for grieving—
for a pause I cannot claim,
for a moment to settle
in this vast, ocean—
but not before reading
encrypted words on Signal.
It is a privilege to grieve for grieving,
I tell myself, as I trade credit cards for cries
at a collective-healing retreat.
Treading water masterfully—
unclenched jaw, tears streaming underwater—
salty, bathing, grieving, going,
waiting and wading.
I’m getting good at grieving,
an A+ in grieving—
a diaspora head start,
a 1948 start,
a 1984 start,
born into a century
of inherited grief.
Common to the fighters and those who flee,
those who flee and those who fight
Going, grieving, growing—
ocean vast.
Letting go: salty tears in a salty ocean.
Grief is my companion,
falling through a sandy sieve—
on land manifest as healing
with pain and a pen,
alam wa kalam—
Bountiful yet arid
Longing for ocean,
still swimming,
still grieving,
Becoming shapeless: held in infinity.
Was it already salty here
before these tears?
Photo of Gaza Courtesy of Rozy
