"We love what we have, no matter how little"

Poem
We Love What We Have - Mosab Abu Toha

We love what we have, no matter how little,
because if we don’t, everything will be gone. If we don’t,
we will no longer exist, since there will be nothing here for us.
What’s here is something that we are still
building. It’s something we cannot yet see,
because we are part
of it.
Someday soon, this building will stand on its own, while we,
we will be the trees that protect it from the fierce
wind, the trees that will give shade
to children sleeping inside or playing on swings.

Note

Writing this newsletter on the Monday of a long weekend is the usual thing because Sunday is more of a concept than a calendar thing here. But today, I really don't feel like doing my usual stream-of-consciousness prattle with the continued news of the attack on displaced people in Tel al-Sultan — a refugee camp in Rafah that had been previously marked by the Israeli military as a humanitarian area where aid would be distributed. Two days before the recent airstrikes in Rafah, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to end genocidal actions.

I am donating monthly to UNRWA. Anera is another trusted place for general aid donation. The Palestinian Red Crescent and Doctors Without Borders, among others, are providing medical support. And there are many, many ways to support displaced families and individuals.

like — June Jordan said it —

"I didn’t know and nobody told me and what
could I do or say, anyway?

Yes, I did know it was the money I earned as a poet that
paid
for the bombs and the planes and the tanks
that they used to massacre your family"