Poems/Haifa

I looked into the mirror and said it out loud

The insides of my stomach turning to acid

Fighting their ascent as my eyes moistened

But I am not crying, because I am fighting

And the choking intonations char my vocal chords black
And I am grasping at every last bit of memory I own
Before the bombings
And before the funeral
And before I saw Oklahoma mourn from Saba’s couch in Haifa

I’ve been grasping
Trying to resuscitate pieces of the train tracks
Preserving the snow-padded footsteps
Wails and bones
Both the broken kind and the kind you can see right through the skin
Those who died within the womb
And without
Smells of the vaulted rooms and the burning furnace
The kind that smells like my family

No! I grab myself
And I’m shivering now
I am grasping and I am reliving
Painstakingly reliving and fragmenting whatever is left of the fragments
Because when they come out
Words do not suffice
And my charred throat has caught up with me and leaves me silent

But I am not fighting anymore,
So maybe it’s okay to cry now.