After October 7, 2023
“How are you?”
I feel so stupid asking this every day
so I change the wording, the tone,
smile while I ask
(even though my face barely moves)
as if I try to convey some sort of positivity.
What a farce!
I’m speechless
and the few words that I say besides the anemic
“How are you?”
are all the same:
Tragedy.
Appalling.
Shocking.
Horrible.
Terrible.
Dire.
I’ve become a prostitute of language.
Shut up!
We should all bend our hearts more
cover our words with silence
and listen.
Listen
to the deep
broken breaths.
I try to escape,
go for a walk, run.
I’m one piece.
There are no parts,
no extremities,
just
one
bulk
of concrete wall
that moves with others’ dreams.
Don’t dare to ask
“What dreams?”
Ask:
“How to dream if you
don’t know if
you’re dead or alive?”
At some point, rockets make no sound.
It’s the buzzing of wasps inside your brain
that kills you.
It’s the scream you can’t make,
the most painful and loudest.
It’s by fiercely moving your toes,
grinding your teeth,
clasping your fists,
biting your tongue
that you feel alive
just to fall into a state of numbness:
a faceless mannequin staring at a wall.
And you do it again
and again
and again
and
again.
Because falling into a state of numbness,
being a faceless mannequin staring at a wall
is the only thing you’re good at right now.
“I just want the world to see this from a human eye,”
my friend pleaded over the phone.
His last words sucked all the air left in the room
while a darnel crept up my neck.
What have we become?
I dwell in ungrateful tears.
My bitter wrath hardly lights a match.
Hopelessness wears a plastic crown
and sits by my side.
What have we become?
Humanity hurts me. Deeply
hurts
like hugging my loved one
wrapped in barbed wire.
Every pore bleeds
and I have no skin.
What have we become?
I need to feel everything.
I can’t feel anything.
Period.
