Another Night

The unbroken trauma of Rafah

rajatonvimma /// VJ Group Random Doctors, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons

“The ground invasion”, he said
“would be a red line”
A red line as wide as an ocean
As hard as a marshmallow
As real as a mirage

That red line is a river
that flows through the heart
of every soul in Rafah
That cannot be crossed
because it doesn’t exist

What does exist is the trauma
The constant torture of drones
The nearness of death
The grief that never finds
a conclusion

What does exist is a pattern
A chillingly constant pattern
of night and death,
of day and hell
and body bags

Life spectates while evil acts
and reads its iambic pentameters
as predictable as death
As spontaneous as an ant
As warm as a corpse

And life becomes like wallpaper
as the nightly death toll
becomes as predictable as the sunrise
because this is the new normal
in the…