I tremble each time / a table of food / appears before me.

As for me—If I must die, let my body remain whole.

From the balcony of our home, we now look out at bombed buildings, a pool of sewage water, and dark clouds of pollution hovering over a lifeless sea.

‘I can still hear their cries when we left the house,’ says Mera. ‘I tried to hold them, to tell them everything would be fine — but I couldn’t believe it myself.’

In Gaza, peril surrounds pregnancy, birth, and infancy. Parents wonder how much longer their children will be denied the right to live in safety.

You were / The sigh of an orange tree / The hymn of faith, and love, and joy.

The vocabulary of my younger sister, born in 2023, is laced with words of destruction.

I know my poem won’t / prevent the next bomb / won’t even save itself / from choking under the rubble.

Between borders and uncertainty, we fight to live, learn, heal, and hope again.

My dream of becoming a teaching assistant has been supplanted by something much less meaningful.

Through my work as an ophthalmologist in Gaza, I have helped patients and also eased my own pain.

My family refused to leave Gaza City until a terrifying new weapon forced us to evacuate.