by Sufjan Simone

Created on: April 08, 2009

THE SAFETY OF MINE

I did not travel this far only to be haunted.

Yet the ghosts return with such ferocity: the face
of a child, perhaps no older than three. Still.
Eyelids white with dust from the rubble of her house.

The cold eye of the camera transports her death
via satellite to countless living rooms,
to the safety of mine.

A dam of blood rises on the other side of the world,

the land of my birth. There, terror is a daily bread
force-fed by invaders.

The ones I left behind wake up every day
walled in, prisoners in their own land.
Yet I know they dream.

Yesterday a man at a restaurant cheered
as the flatscreen television captured
the blossoming of bombs back home.

His skin was no lighter than mine, the child
in his arms no older than that girl.
How is luck to be thanked for this?

Tonight, even as I kiss my sleeping daughter,
I tremble. She has a low fever. I feel I am in a dream
and the breath from her lips may not be real.

I sit next to her and read from an article:

At the end of December 2008, there were 342 Palestinian children held in Israeli prisons and detention/interrogation centers, including seven girls, and five administrative detainees. The December 2008 figures reveal the highest reported numbers of child detainees in 2008. In addition, on 17 January, DCI-Palestine issued a statement expressing concern that numbers of children arrested by the Israeli authorities in the West Bank has doubled in the first two weeks of January.
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article1023 9.shtml

I read it again and look at my child.
The dam is rising. The dam is rising.
I am haunted by the blood of home.

Learn more about this author, Sufjan Simone.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.