I used to believe
it took so much to kill
without a bullet. I didn’t know
the hollowness of bodies,
how hands can lunge
and it can all collapse
like matter. Like nothing
matters. On TV,
a black man chokes.
A Palestinian man chokes.
No guns, no bombs. The body
caves in on itself:
the color of Dead Sea mud
licking the palms of my hands.
The reflection of our shadows
against tanks doesn’t reveal
the ways we perspire
or cry. But I see myself
in the little girl whose
bike careens into barbed wire,
and, still, she laughs. Once,
I was young like her too.
I didn’t know what people
could do to one another.
Once, I didn’t know my own worth,
and tried to snuff my body out,
let the pain slide
from my side until I was smoke,
choking the panicked bodies of those
that loved me. I used to think
this was hard. On TV,
a man walks down his street
peddling homemade cigarettes,
the police wrap his neck in the crook of an elbow,
and he can’t breathe, they can’t
breathe, I can’t breathe—
the breath leaves and I hear
its truth, but how can I live with it?
The man, the police officers,
he belongs, they belong,
we belong to us.