The Fading Textures Of Hunger

Eleven summers dance in Yasmin’s bones,  

A spark unquenched by Gaza’s grinding stone.  

She finds him foraging the ashen street –

A rib-cage donkey, staggering on his feet.

"Himari!" Laughter, bright as shrapnel’s glare,

Claims the gaunt shadow tethered to despair.

 

Yamma’s voice rasps, thin as dust: “The cost –

Our own plates scrape the void. This one's cause is lost.”

But Yasmin’s palm, outstretched, holds half her share:

Warm milk, a crust, thin air made tangible there.

Daddy nods – a world held in that brief incline.

The mule’s soft muzzle brushes hers like mine.

 

Scarcity bites deeper. Days stretch, thin and stark.

Daddy hunts the shoreline, blind in the dark,

Returns with mussels, strange and slick and grey,

Or empty hands to greet the hollow day.

Yasmin divides the nothing on her plate,

Her portion shrinks, a disappearing weight.

Her Himari stumbles now, a broken chair,

His great head drooping in the rubble-air.

 

Salt water trickles where her milk once flowed,

A meagre offering on a road erased.

She scours gutters, desperate, fiercely brave,

For one green shoot, one crust the bombs had saved.

She sees young Ahmad down the broken track,

His mules led off – “They’re good beasts," he cries,

"Please treat them kindly. They're not Palestinians.”

She pictures them in fields, alive, sincere,

Grazing deep grass beneath a kinder sun,

While her Himari shivers, dying. Finally done.

 

Her sleep builds cities tall with steaming bread,

Collapsed schools weep flour where the hungry tread.

Her smile grows rare, a flicker drowned in grey.

Cheek hollows cradle dusk. Bones start to say

What flesh conceals no more. A spark ignites

Too quick – a snapped twig in the fading lights.

 

Then Daddy is carried home slow from West Rafah line,

No promised flour sack, but a dark, slow-trickling sign

Above his temple. “Daddy,” soft and low,

“Feast tonight with martyred kins.

Eat well for Yamma and me.”

They scrape him the earth, a shallow, grieving bed.

Yasmin leans heavy on the weight unsaid.

 

Exhaustion crawls inside her marrow, deep.

To sit is labour. Thought begins to sleep.

Legs swell like dough left sour in the gloom,

Her belly taut, a small, denying tomb.

Nausea claws, yet “Food!” the wasted cry.

The cold gnaws deeper as the days bleed by.

 

She sees him sometimes – Daddy at the door,

A sack swung proud upon the vanished floor.

Her Himari nudges, strong beside her knee.

Yamma sits praying, silent as a tree,

Tears dust-dry tracks on cheeks already thin,

A vigil held against the raging din.

 

Then stillness. Sudden, like a snatched-held breath.

The grinding ache surrenders, welcomes death

Not as a foe, but respite. Frostbite air

Wraps gentle. “Yamma…” Fragile, beyond care,

“...I don’t need food. I'm just cold. We’ll be alright.”

A phantom smile, a momentary light,

Then eyelids shut like shutters on the pain,

A fragile vessel launched on a quiet main.

 

Her mother bends. A kiss on sunken clay,

Whispers brush the stillness of the day:

“My bird, fly swift. Seek Papa, wait awhile…

Yamma unpacks her heart. It’s just a mile.”

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