So We Don’t Sleep
written by: Souad Zakarani
I’m afraid to close my eyes,
O mother,
Your eyelashes raise one question after another.
There is a story in your eyes—speak it.
Words yawn on my tongue;
They’ve lived there long enough.
Arise, O rubble,
Come out of me!
Perhaps I could breathe,
with a body freed from shrouds.
Can we tidy the house one last time
before we’re displaced?
Can we photograph it for memory—
Store our laughter, our tears, and our screams—
then leave?
O sea stacked before us
like a shy embrace
in a world not ours,
Can you send our echo to nearby oceans
So a giant whale strikes the occupier’s base?
Can we invent a new alphabet
for fear, for pain, for home,
So the world hears
That gray, continuous sound above us—
Buzzing planes,
Roaring rockets
Above green, above ruin,
Above a gravestone
Scrawled in charcoal on a burnt house,
The trace of a Firebolt?
A thousand times, the eyes sip from the sky
while we search for warmth
to gently carry us to sleep
under our balcony,
a seamless sleep that tickles the stars.
I want… to sleep.
I dreamed of some leader speaking—
Do you hear, mother?
I see you laughing, feeding the birds.
I see you playing on the swing of paradise,
Iridescent colors glowing in a rainbow slumber,
Like a bottle shaken—dreams all mixed inside.
O mother, I swear I saw it:
One shroud in Gaza holding
the bodies of three martyrs.
I became a worn, wounded body
groaning with pain.
I want to hear the heartbeat of the sun—
or the heart itself… that sponge
which has grown hard.
That’s how we walk—on feathers—
until we reach the peak of exhaustion
In full daylight and say:
We shall live here.
- So We Don’t Sleep - November 22, 2025
- Feel Free - May 1, 2025
