Broken Promise

I walk with silence

Assassin’s accomplice

The threads that connect me

to my history in shreds

The olive tree uprooted

The ancestors buried in lies

Goodbyes unheard

Hands unheld

Niemoller’s words burn

on the foul breath

of Balfour’s broken Promise

So few open arms

Stretched till their fingers

cannot close over

this dehisced wound

in the gut of humanity

Map, most banal butcher

Your lines in the dirt

have made foreigners of us all

We will find each other

We will be what is left

when the smoke clears

You can occupy a garden

but not the heart

that planted it.

September 2021