(For Emily Henochowicz)
Sniped in the eye
before my vision
could savor the next ‘thirsty pixel’.
Blue skies
now charcoal
now crimson
and then no more…
Clouds pushing hard
for a way out of my socket…
Blue tears
streams and rivers
and then this drought
carves its bed in my face.
Know they, that I can spell
more names for color
than they ever tasted in their
mothers’ wombs?
Know they, that Yahweh
designed different dawns
for minds like mine?
Know they, that I am the same blood
that pulled that trigger…
And saw they, with their eyes
that can still see,
the horizons of their expiring aspirations
refracting?
If an eye was the cost,
my cause is not lost.
I did not fall.
Their humanity did.
_______________________________
My poem to Emily Henochowicz, a Jewish art student who lost her eye to an IDF sniper when protesting the Gaza flotilla incident.
