& so i let myself wonder 🌊

an experiment of writing into the question

after Hanif Abdurraqib’s A Little Devil in America

the appropriate & sometimes only response to tears

who went to palestine & who emerged?  

& to delay answering the question i look out the window over my backyard & press play on the voice note that appeared in my palm & hear that my friend had a dream of me & of us & of eating breakfast on the beach in gaza & the table was long & the people were known & unknown & maybe i gave a speech but he doesn’t know exactly but he does know it was a good dream & so his sleeping dream became my waking dream & i thought to dream together like this is love & i look for that love in america but the currency of relating is different here & i still haven’t learned to play it cold let alone cool & i think i understand what makes palestine so transformative, that the less it exists as a physical place the more it is strengthened as a spiritual one & how it’s a force that lives in dream world & in imagination & in whatever you want to call the realm that transcends colonial fragmentation & maybe its futurism & maybe its hope & maybe they’re the same & in palestine, resistance is alive & delicious & inviting & here, resistance is fractured & lonely & the sound of a sad trombone & i think about vulnerability & how it is required to build a fulfilling life & nurture fulfilling love & what is palestine but an embodiment of vulnerability: a parcel of earth with open wounds into which children are lowered or should i say shoved & again & again & again their names are held by minarets & the stores are shuttered & still they smile & still they sing & still they dance to the pulse of memory that beats & beats & beats unhindered

& i carry on by foot

& i think about driving from jersey to dc & the 3.5 hours it takes to travel 235 miles & how zesty it feels to move without interruption & i think about driving from the west bank to gaza & the 3.5 hours it takes to travel 55 miles & the suffocation of being stopped again & again & again hindered & how brilliant it is that coffee vendors mill about traffic stalled by walls because you need caffeine to navigate apartheid & to show papers & to renew permits & to recite my grandfather’s name into a mic framed by bullet-proof glass & to be told to wait & to be told to sit & to watch german shepherds sniff the backseat & the disdain & the questions & to be tossed my ID & to be told i can go & to slam the trunk & to lower the hood & to get on with the next 25 miles just to abandon the car in the parking lot outside gaza & i smile at that time we belted joni’s words about paving paradise after one too many araks & i carry on by foot & i weep for streets cratered by far too many missiles & i should quit my whining & i should give thanks & what a luxury that i even get to move at all & i delay answering the question worrying that heartache will cloud my answer & then i remember grief is a spiral & also a propellor & so i let myself wonder if i felt so whole in palestine because i’m prone to wearing heart adorned sleeves & here that’s crushed & there it’s life — like the time my friends sat around a long table in gaza & asked for a speech & i tried & i cried & they smiled & they sang & we ate & we know to resist is to

feel openly & to feel alone & to feel together &

celebration can be the appropriate & sometimes only response to tears & joy is a weapon of mass creation & love is matter neither created nor destroyed & then i remember the musician who said love was born in palestine & i re-think my theories & i wonder if he was referring to jesus & i wonder if he kept my poem & i swear for a moment my backyard morphed into the sea when i heard the words:

i dreamed of you.