Gaza

I looked at the Instagram story of Motaz_Azaiza and I saw a little boy whose lower body was nothing but shredded meat… Israel is invading Rafah and the ringing in my ears is so damn loud, when I am in a room full of educated people who are saying *nothing.* My friends are saying nothing. My family is unfriending me on social media when I say anything. My government is telling me I’m antisemitic, despite my vast knowledge and empathy for survivor stories of the Holocaust, and I feel so GOD DAMN INSANE. I watch protests through my phone, but no one around me is doing anything. I wear a palestinian keffiyeh on hot days and no one asks. I boycott Starbucks and people just give me a confused look. I get angry at Joe Biden and people just go silent and awkward. I am in a vaccuum and the silence is deafening. People want to talk about their work issues and all I can think about is the man I saw run over by a military tank. I can’t stop thinking about how Facebook censored me for even sharing the image of a dead man’s arm and how I cannot show anyone what I am seeing through other sources. People look away from what little they see, and I feel like I am some brainwashed radical for refusing to look away from what my government is making me pay for. I feel so insane. I wish someone would just walk up to me, hug me, and tell me they see it too, so I don’t have to feel like some child who’s made up the ghost in her room.
I just want someone to hold me and let me cry and scream, because I’ve realized if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, it is a silent violence that just comes out in the form of shaking vibrations that I feel to my core.
I wish the people I loved could see my body shredded, emaciated, flattened, or any of the countless other ways I’ve seen bodies mangled, and I so badly wish that would turn their silence to an outcry. I want to believe that if I gave every last bit of myself, maybe someone would care enough- that is the depth of how powerless I feel. Gaza is on fire. Children are dying. And I am haunted by it all, as it silently looms, invisible, in every crowd, in every room.