Will you turn your palms to the sky? Will you turn your palms to the prayer hunger makes? Will you feed and feed, and lick the bowl clean when we’re both full?

“…people like Jesus and Paul were not executed for saying, “Love one another.” They were killed because their understanding of love meant more than being compassionate towards individuals, although it did include that. It also meant standing against the domination systems that rule their world, and collaborating with the Spirit in the creation of a new way of life that stood in contrast to the normalcy of the wisdom of this world. Love and justice go together. Justice without love can be brutal and love without justice can be banal. Love is the heart of justice and justice is the social form of love.”

Salt glimmers on the lover’s body. Lingers. 

“The idolatry of the self and the desecration of the self and the dissipation of the self…”

“‘I will love You forever,’ swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. I will love you at 4:15 P.M. next Tuesday: is that still as easy?”

“no words do not make love they make absence if i said water would i drink? if i said bread would i eat?”

“Reporting and posting about what’s happening in Gaza, Palestine feels pointless,” Plestia writes on day 37, having regained access to her account after two days without it. “It feels like I’m posting movie scenes for people to watch, and whenever they get bored they watch something else.” It’s a good point, one that instills shame. At what stage do we become voyeurs? Are people just watching and not witnessing? To watch is to consume; to witness is to acknowledge, to bestow some degree of legitimacy. But what does it do to see it? Is empathy ever enough? “Compassion is an unstable emotion,” Susan Sontag wrote. “It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.” Earlier, I went to share a post and stopped myself. I thought of Motaz’s apology, his shame at filming Gazans in their worst moments. Will a picture of a girl who has lost 60 family members and the use of her legs inspire only empathy? Will it change anything, or will the bombing just continue, the number of orphans and murdered doctors keep rising?