unilateral

I lay waiting for the bombs to fall,
the screaching of gravity
pulling a projectile of death
down to its random target.

I look into the darkness for the smoldering souls,
the children screaming into the night
as life expires through cold lips.

I listen for the building to crumble beneath me,
for the smell of rubble and turmoil,
a landscape changed by hatred.

I dream of understanding the malice and anger,
between these two hallowed nations,
and the recognition of a people as a "Zionist regime."

I stare into the bleak future,
awaiting the moment when,
I will have to explain to a child's mind
from where hatred and death stem.

I imagine the vastness in their eyes
when I speak of God and religion
as the catalyst of carnage and carrion.

insomnia

My sleepless nights
are when I think of you.

Not in that horrific moment
when your flesh was stripped from your body
and you lay dying under my hands.

Insomnia comes
when I imagine you as a girl of 15
cursing my name to the heavens
for saving your broken life.

Will you pray for my demise
for helping to save your fractured body.
For enslaving you into that chair,
and forcing your existence into synthetic legs.

Will you wish upon a star
that you had died on that cold asphalt
drowning in your own blood
rather than be crippled.

My sleepless nights
are when I think of you
lying dead in my arms
crying for a normal life;
a life which I stole from you
in an altruistic moment.

We just assumed that the baby girl
thrown from her mother's speeding car
to the unforgiving ground below
would have wanted to live
no matter the sequelae.

Yet, I stare into the darkness
night after night,
asking for forgiveness
for a life I hope I did not ruin
in a medical moment.

I try to imagine
all that you can become
yet I fall back to the knowledge
of the struggles to come.

My sleepless nights
will continue
I fear
because your life has just barely begun.