This poem is about my personal process since October 7th, a process of the getting of more clarity. This is an expression of resolve to extricate myself from fantasy and be with what is as courageously as I am able.
You Are Not Coming
Friends, we’ve waited here too long and still you aren’t coming to speak for the ones we are harming to speak for the ones we are killing to speak for the young ones bleeding and dying to speak for the tender and righteous and starving. Friends, you are worried for what you are losing now and possibly in the future because lands and cities and people are fragile you’ve always been scared and hidden in grieving and you choose to go inward or elsewhere and you are not coming Call yourself radical, liberal, progressive, feminist, reasonable, spiritual, or just apprehensive. Friends, your silence is truthful. Your few words are hurtful. Our hearts and our arms grow stronger and you will need us because you are weaker. Friends, you are distant but closer. I see you more clearly. And I see you aren’t coming. I see you aren’t coming to fight with the warriors and defend the children. I see you aren’t coming to open the borders. And when prison gates close when the bombs fall when we are raped and silenced and beaten when we have to hide, but for different reasons, now I know you aren’t coming. And I know a woman who loves women born Jewish but practicing freedom beyond reasons and empires and doctrines of feeling. And I’ve learned I am also Palestinian. And you will not be coming.
from Death Poems by Shambhavi Sarasvati