The Children of Gaza
A poem for the small voices that echo through the rubble.
There are children in Gaza who have not known a dawn without drone-song,
who build castles in rubble, powder-dust coating their small, defiant palms.
They dream in static, lullabied by sirens, cradled by mothers
who whisper fairy tales through cracked lips
because magic must exist somewhere, if not here, then where?
There are children in Gaza who do not draw houses, they draw keys. Rusted, ancient keys to doors that no longer stand,
doors their grandparents promised would swing wide again.
They keep them like talismans in pockets that sag with hunger,
weight of inheritance heavier than bread.
There are children in Gaza whose laughter tastes of metal, yet somehow it still comes, sudden as a star across a blackout sky.
They chase kites when there is wind, they chase shadows when there is none.
They share bread, marbles, secrets, stories, tiny anarchists of hope against the machinery of ruin.
There are children in Gaza whose names you do not know,
and whose graves you will not see.
Yet they carry the echo of every child:
the right to grow teeth and bruises and bad poetry,
to kick a ball instead of bones,
to fear monsters under the bed, not overhead.
To speak of Gaza’s children is to speak of tomorrow,
the one stolen, the one stubbornly born anew each time they draw a sun
on the charred wall of their world.
So let us not pretend they are only ghosts or statistics.
They are alive.
They are tired.
They are miracles.
They are not asking to be saints,
only children,
if the world would allow it.