[conflict/occupation]

today i woke up & was a city of severed limbs. eyelashes stained shut from salt residue as if to resist [         ]. my stomach shrieks, her screams muffled by acid, & she is a [         ]. white cells crowd the architecture of my veins & become settlement turned [         ] & i belong

nowhere. when i open my mouth, a severed tongue falls out & that is [         ]. yesterday i swallowed a crystalline liquid, a white witch’s tears, a friend joked & i became a pantomime of myself – existence defined through [         ]. the way i am most at home when outside

myself. today, a needle pierces the bridge of my nose, my skin bubbles & retreats from the puncture the way one escapes a burning country & that is a [         ] & when i clean the wound i lose more cells to [         ], hence extermination defined through self-defense; the same way piercings migrate when exposed to external trauma & that is a [         ] but i promised, this wouldn’t be a poem about my body. or Palestinian [         ] but it is always

both. i contour my face with sand & it is war paint on the wrong body. i puncture my nostril with steel & that is a war crime on the wrong body. a hamsa dangles from my earlobe & the room empties itself of white bodies & i am always the wrong body

here. is this what they mean by mediterranean witchcraft? the way i reclaim this skin home that was never mine – & that is the perfect [         ]. the way gender makes my body Queer [         ] – isn’t this the slowest form of genocide? i have so many bodies in me; if you look close enough,

you could almost mistake me for a massacre.