A Dream of My People

I dream of my people.

In swirls of sandy tan and ocean blue marred with violent splotches of red

These dreams become memories that sit deep in my bones and itch at my surface.

They mix with reality and pull at my core, dragging me along

They are in me and of me now. 

My dreams look like the bodies of thousands of children torn to pieces and placed in plastic bags laid in rows that stretch across our lands, mapping death, mapping grief.

My dreams looks like an old man hunched over crawling from the only home he’s ever known, dragging his belongings behind him in a tattered bag

My dreams look like politicians, world leaders, family, friends, colleagues, voters, strangers on the street, laughing, laughing, laughing as death piles at the door

My dreams look like lost jobs, lost friends, lost opportunities, lost innocence, lost beliefs. My dreams look like never to be held funerals and burials that will never be found.

My dreams look like people used as political pawns by every side of the spectrum.

My dreams look like the olive trees and the ocean and the desert and the mountains and mint tea and beautiful tapestries of tatreez stitched together telling stories that only we can read.

My dreams look like pain and hope and survival and

resistance

and resistance

and

resistance.