Again, it is December,
Second December,
Without stars.

Christmas lights bloom  –
Colors,
Trees,
Red  –  for romance,
For joy.

But for me,
A Gazan in exile,
Red spills as blood.

The lights make me panic.
They are ghosts of a world I can no longer reach.
Darkness consumes my December.
A month of grief sharpened by silence
A year carved from pain.

December,
The month I was killed.
My uncle,
My cousin,
My friend,
All gone.

I lost my cousin to hunger,
Her life stolen, not by bombs,
But by the slow, cruel hand of famine.

Since last December,
I’ve known nothing
about my friend Shahad or her family.

For three weeks,
I lived without the voices of my family,
Disconnected,
Their fate
A black void I couldn’t fill.
Was my home still standing?
Were they still alive?

Alone,
In exile,
Trapped in a cocoon of fear and sadness.
I cannot grieve,
Cannot weep beside their graves.
There are no graves for the exiled.

Fear is my companion now,
Loneliness my shadow.

Homeless,
“Stateless”
Erased.
Forgotten by a world
Wrapped in tinsel and cheer.

Christmas lights,
“New wishes,
New beginnings.”

Promising peace,
In a world painted with genocide,
Their glow mocks the darkness of my home.

But Santa Claus,
Do your gifts reach the ruins?
Can you bring them back?
Bring me back?