we are not numbers
emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights
Alone / I walk among the rubble of what was once our neighborhood / past the graves of memories and loved ones.
Painting (oil on fiberboard, 50 × 70 cm): Sana Saleh
Alone,
I walk among the rubble of what was once our neighborhood,
past the graves of memories and loved ones.
I walk,
lost, with no clear aim or direction,
through alleyways that once pulsed with life,
now reduced to stones and silence.
I walk alone,
carrying the last fragile thread of life in me.
Still,
I walk alone.
Editor’s note: This is the third in a series of poetic fragments written to accompany paintings intended as testimony to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. It follows the first two poetic fragments, The birth and No longer exists.
The artist says, “They are poems written not to clarify each painting but to echo it. I hope these pairings offer an opening into the world that no longer exists, into the ruins of home, and into the fragile thread of life that art still dares to carry.”
