Depollute me, pretty baby
**** the rot right out of my bloodstream

Oh, dilute me, gentle angel
Water down what I call being grateful

Oh, you kissed me just to kiss me
Not to take me home

It was simple, it was sweetness
It was good to know

You look perfect, you look different
I don't wonder about your indifference

If I said you could never touch me
You'd come over and say I looked lovely

Oh, you kissed me just to kiss me
Not to make me cry

It was simple, you are sweetness
Let's just sit a while

Depollute me, gentle angel
And I'll feel the sickness less and less

Come and kiss me, pretty baby
Like we'll never have ***

With your hand in mine
I no longer fear the fall

I embrace the climb.

Celebrating Ramadan amidst the concrete rubble

String lights illuminate hungry faces

To be surrounded by oppression and violence yet sit together at a table to share a feast

That is true resilience.

Love radiates from the dishes, food scarce so they share

No matter the evil, the deathly threats,

They stand together united, all as one,
Their connection un-severed.
Material things, they have none.

To have such joy in dark times
Is to resist the occupation, to be freed
Body, Soul, Spirit, Mind.

I want to be a great many things

But to be great is daunting
And to do much is tiring

I want to express myself in a beautiful way
spreading deep emotions across crisp pages

Allowing my reader to adventure
To see worlds beyond their imagination
To become wise from my text

I want to live and breathe my poems, my art, my books

I’ll die to share a piece of myself,

to express my soul, to feel that I have told the stories that haven’t yet been told,

I’ll die for that