The Warning: Thoughts as I Put My Daughter to Bed

At night I lie beside my daughter until she falls asleep. I lie there with her long body curled into mine and listen for her breathing to change so I know I can sneak away to do all the things moms do after their kids go to bed. Lately, I've been staying a while longer after she's asleep. Lately, all I can think about are the mothers in tents in Rafah covering the ears of her starving babies to try to muffle the sound of bombs falling all around them. I think how those kids are the lucky ones because they still have a mother and they can die wrapped in her arms.

Do you have these same thoughts as you put your children to sleep? 

Below is a poem that I wrote in January, inspired by the first lines of Joy Harjo's "A Map to The Next World." I added to it last week after watching videos of student protesters being violently subdued. The original poem was sparked by a prompt brought to me by Molly Caro May through her writing group, the Loam.

The Warning

What I am telling you is real and is printed as a warning on the map. 

Our forgetfulness stalks us, 

walks the earth behind us, leaving a trail of dismembered souls and disembodied hearts

desperate to find their way back. 

Back to a time before patriarchy cut us from our Mother. 

Before colonizers proselytized indigenous lands,

severing our faith in the natural world 

and our collective understanding of human’s place in it. 

The warning rises up from the stumps of the clear cut forest, 

a cry for remembrance. 

Pleading for us to come back to her 

to love her

to care for her as we once did. 

The warning is written tenderly, with shaking hands

onto the once supple arms of babes in Gaza, 

so that we will know their names when we pull them from the rubble. 

The warning is sung by birds flying from their nests 

as their olive trees are ripped up by the roots. 

The warning echoes through a land, once Holy,

as hostages rot and mothers wail

rocking small bundles wrapped in white. 

The warning seeps through the shroud, 

blurred crimson letters 

scrawled in a language no one speaks, 

but everyone understands. 

The warning is chanted by students

arms linked in a chain of solidarity

demanding for an end to the institutionalized terror. 

The warning beats on the drum of police shields

keeping rhythm with the thump of rubber bullets

and the hiss of tear gas. 

The warning sits quietly as men debate

if children should be forced to have babies, 

if women should have equal rights,

how many bombs to send, 

which guns to ship across the sea. 

The warning whispers to the child in the night,

soon it will be over and you can rest

as the bomb whistles towards her tent. 

The warning begs, screams, rages

then falls silent

to wait for the world to rediscover its humanity.

***

The warning signs are all around us. Our governments have failed the mothers and the children of this earth. We have lost our way.

#poetry #humanity #grief #mothers 

* The image is a screenshot I took on Instagram in the early days of the war. If you know the source, please help me cite it.