by Mohammed Ahmad
Grief coils like smoke on my bleached tongue,
Not for the dead, but for the selves I’ve executed quietly
in the empty hours of dusk,
where the dogs lay and where I am awakened
by the sour scent of a dreamers musk
A lover of sorts, but never the one who is loved
A willful child with a small smile,
stacked up like bricks in the cavity of my chest,
I grieve the children who bellowed their reasons like sunbirds
The children who moved through the world
with a hurricane-like mind,
Their eyes milk white, and unblinking,
Their teeth unspoken truths, their hands,
a thousand small graves,
clawing at my ribs,
knell after knell,
A borrowed breath,
And you still call this living
Mohammed Ahmad is a Palestinian-American poet based in Los Angeles. He holds a Master of Arts in Professional Creative Writing, with an emphasis in poetry, from the University of Denver. Alongside his poetry, Ahmad works as an actor and an independent journalist. He is the co-founder of Poets for Palestine, a monthly open mic series with six chapters nationwide, dedicated to poetic resilience and to building a community of poets and artists across the country.