she’s never seen the sea
sunlight imprinted on her father’s skin
waves crashing
and his feet smiled tattooed under boyish grin
snapping pictures
with closing eyelids
her father’s face
flush on recollection
the same waves that had clenched like an angry jaw
as his mother pushed him forward like a train car
watch his neighbor drown
tears streaming
eyes connecting
screams muffled
as inhalation suffocated lungs
muscles weary
skin pruning
he was barely a boy
knowing he’d never return
his neighbor
an older man born in Akka
looked dapper at dinner parties
looked helpless that day
his body revolting against death
a pool intent on swallowing him
so many stroking to get on boats departing
who’d have known this gulf would have been their deathbed
she has been beaten
ID checked
body thrown to the ground
fist and feet pummeled
tender flesh
shoulder broken
heart too many times
tear gas inscribed on her lungs
she wrote back on her breath that the canister’s defeat is near
these fields are ours
she said to me
before the Europeans and Brooklynites
before the swimming pools
army jeeps
and barbed wires
before the talks
road maps
and Swiss cheese plants
before declarations rewrote history
those hills met footprints and that can’t be erased
like village massacres can’t be erased
like broken bones policies can’t be erased
like the screams ringing in her father’s ears can’t be erased
we are the boat returning to dock
we are the footprints on the northern trail
we are the iron coloring the soil
we cannot be erased
- Remi Kanazi
art: ‘We Shall Return” by Abu Shtayyah
