The Elegy of Now

Occasionally, I allow myself the brief pleasure of picturing waking up to a world void of so much murder, violence and hatred

The same world in which my powerful voice isn't insignificant to the gravity of war crimes or the intended suffering and starvation of young children, robbed of a future and childhood that was meant to be theirs

The constant droning of jets and bombs going off is their only soothing lullaby

I watch through a screen as they cry to Allah and eat the dirt from the ground whilst begging for a means of survival, while my helplessness feels like complicity

They tell us how freedom of speech is a right in this country,

Yet they have shackled our wrists and gagged our mouths and placed us behind bars for our "unlawful" protests

They cannot cage the unified swell of recognition for the injustices we bear witness to.

The soils of Congo, Sudan and Palestine are wet with the grief and sorrow of their people

People exterminated, their land and roots severed for ownership

The fortunate laugh and celebrate, while the unfortunate have to carry the corpses of their deceased loved ones in their arms

Entire bloodlines slaughtered, history choking on its own repetition

My survival is its own kind of crime.

They cannot call it self-defence and expect us to believe that the blood staining their hands is blood born of an act of protection

Every death is a stone added to our pockets

Their currency is blood-soaked, their suits stitched from starvation, their pens drip with signatures that kill as efficiently as bullets

Yet they continue to preach of order, kneel at the altars of profit, rinse their hands in rivers they have polluted with death

With every passing minute, I am inclined to question where is the beautiful, wonderful world we were promised at birth?

What are we doing to one another?

How will this end?

So forgive me if I am not softening my words for their comfort,

I am incapable of pretending neutrality is not complicity

I want a world where division is non-existent, where hatred and violence are foreign matters

I want a world where peace and unity are a birthright for my descendants, too.