The Language of Grief

Poetry on Palestine, longing, and love

I spoke your name to the dunes,
their silence a mirror to my grief.
Each grain of sand—
a word I never said,
a touch I never offered.

How vast is the desert of longing,
how endless its horizon.
No shadow falls here but yours,
no wind moves but to echo
the sound of your absence.

Come back,
and I will pour oceans into your palms,
spill my breath to unbury the stars
hidden in the hollow of your leaving.

What is love but a wound
that refuses to heal?

---

Your absence sits in my chest
like a bird with broken wings,
beating against the cage of my ribs.
Each flutter a reminder
that flight is no longer possible.

I lit candles for you in the garden,
but the wind came.
It always comes, doesn’t it?
Stealing light,
stealing warmth.

You once said love is eternal.
But I wonder—
is it the bloom or the ash that lingers?
The warmth of a touch,
or the cold ache it leaves behind?

---

Grief speaks in a tongue I have learned too well,
a tongue heavy with loss,
its alphabet carved from olive pits and bullet casings.
It recites the names of hills that bleed into the sea,
of streets where shadows dance beneath broken lanterns.

Who will teach me another language—
one where the trees do not weep
and the earth does not swallow the voices of children?

Oh, Palestine, your rivers run backwards,
your fields bloom with ashes instead of wheat.
I hold your soil in my palm and feel the weight of exile,
its scent sharper than jasmine,
its silence louder than a call to prayer.

Grief writes my name beside yours
in the book of the forgotten,
but I refuse to be erased.
Even if my voice cracks, I will speak you into existence
until the dawn remembers where it belongs.