The Language of Angels

A calico cloth, laid out flat, like so much of your lands.
Thousands of stitches but nowhere near enough in number to measure the lives
taken.
The tiny drops of blood from a finger pierced by sharpness.
Nothing in the ocean of blood that has been brutally spilled.
Frustration at the lost thread, slipping from the needles eye.
Nothing, when you must pack your few belongings and move on, Again, again,
again.
Exasperation at my slowness, my lack of skill.
Nothing, when you must begin each day and find some thread of hope to do what
needs to be done for the children.
Hunger that causes me to consider putting aside my stitching.
Nothing, when I have ample food in my cupboard and you – you are slowly starving
as you feed your children first.
I sleep in a safe, warm, comfortable bed, whilst you huddle with what remains of your
family under a few blankets for protection.
Today I sewed the name of young woman with the same name as my own
granddaughter.
Aisha, 25 years old, someone’s daughter, someone’s granddaughter. Maybe
someone’s wife and someone’s mother.
In many ways I prefer the reverse side of the sewing. The strange, angular shapes.
The knots and loops.
And I choose to believe it is a language known only by angels.
That they might fast-track these souls into the presence of God. Where they might
know peace, love and acceptance.
Far, far away from the angry egos of bitter, old men.

#StitchTheirNamesTogether – a project with women all around the world stitching the
names of those killed in the Palestinian genocide. A small way to remember, to
honour.

Hunger

Certainly, it’s everywhere, right? All over the world?
Yes, someway or the other. I read a report about it. I saw it in the street today. 
Oh! I met it last year while travelling. I saw the eyes filled with it.
I watched a documentary last week. Does it quench? It depends on gnawing a hundred holes.
Was it in the past? Yes, of course. Though things were different, so what?
Though you distance yourself, you ignore it, you overlook it, you avoid it somehow.
Yet, it remains at the corner of your heart, in the prick of your heart, in your searching eyes, in the crevices of your brain.
Reflected in anger, frustration, impatience, shrieks, stress, sentences, sights, rights.
Sometimes in silence, sometimes out of sight. Condemned to live by comrades of dying.
At times it becomes unpronounceable.
What else?
Suppose we are able to measure it, then what?
Escaped to be entrapped. In any case, shot in war.
Faces, could you recognise any?
Carrying continuously, from here to there. Keep a low-pressure area on the surface life.
Can it be divided?
Licking the pavements, swallowing the insults, digesting the injustices, biting the bitten heart.
Leaving nothing for the vulture, nothing to be eaten, except plastic.
On the other hand, the world goes by and we move on.

Published in The Poetry Lighthouse.