Veins Like Rivers Flow

A tendril of rage courses through veins tainted blue blood

Thorns extend through limbs gone slack

Roots split off in every direction mindlessly seeking

Home in a house that's barely a shell

From a blazing sun glare blinding and blanching

Bones that are just brittle beams of a structure bent

(Though never broken)

As critters crisscross across a chest cavity that holds too much ache

Screams still echo in bone marrow

A brother's cry lingers as he holds blue-lip tainted brother

As brush and bramble overgrow and weeds decorate rubble that still rumbles

A mother digs until numb fingers paint dirt crimson

Every family tree has a branch burnt or still left burning

A house once a home lays crumbled

A system we pretend is bent and not broken

Continues to break backs and brittle bones as if there is still fresh air to fill in a chest cavity

Instead of white phosphorus that clings to a name that will not arise again

There is so much rage seeping into once-nourished soil

Now left as a reminder that existence is an inconvenience

A weed, a thorn, a cavity

Something needing to be plucked, clipped, shaved down until

Nothing remains

And remains lay as reminders of genocide that hasn’t been stopped

But you are not forgotten

You are not erased

One day Palestine will be free from the river to the sea

And water, not blood, will flow and fill in all crevices and cavities

Nourishing this land again