"You are who I love"
a poem, with links, for this moment
Dearests,
I write to you not on a full moon because right now, the Israeli government is committing genocide against the Palestinian people, and I must act from where I am.
Last weekend, fellow poet Jane Wong and I led a workshop on poetry as spellcasting toward abolition. Collectively, we read Aracelis Girmay’s vast, kaleidoscopic love poem, “You Are Who I Love,” and then we wrote our own litany or list poem using her refrain.
Lying in bed the other night, meditating on what Starlight & Strategy can offer in this moment, I heard those words: “you are who I love.”
In this moment of so much anger, trauma, hurt, and horror, we need as much love as we can muster.
There are so many courageous, wise, beautiful souls who are speaking out, organizing, and leading in this moment. There are so many who are confused, afraid, grieving, angry, surviving, and dying right now.
I wrote a love poem for all of them; for you.
We also need information and inspiration in this moment, so I’ve included a few links within the poem for you to follow as you choose. (If you would like a more straightforward and comprehensive list of resources on Palestine, here’s one I found.)
Salt and sand and wind and blood and bone
After Aracelis Girmay
You are who I love, picking your way through the rubble of concrete and metal, past the crumpled razor wire into blue air, sirens, and dust
You, greeting the sun which, somehow, keeps rising on another impossible day of bombs, blood, and thirst
You are who I love, wailing and clutching your chest
Your daughters—gone, mother—gone, son, father—gone, sisters—gone, brother—gone, aunt, uncle, aunt, aunt, uncle, cousin, cousin, cousin, beloveds—gone, gone, gone
You wailing a grief that will never end, grief as long as the curving river, as deep as the salted sea
You typing feverishly into the night, writing to the world the only thing to say: we are human, we are human, we are of the land, we are salt and sand and wind and blood and bone
You are who I love
You handing your baby a slice of apple in the middle of the march, a handwritten cardboard sign propped on top of her stroller: THIS JEWISH FAMILY SAYS FREE PALESTINE
You are who I love, cooking a pot of chickpea stew to nourish your friends while responding to texts from student organizers
You are who I love, posting memes, quotes, statements, pages from books of poetry—even when you feel you are shouting into the echo chamber, even when showered with enraged messages from strangers
You explaining once again the long history of colonization and occupation
You are who I love, remembering out loud the family you stayed with in Gaza, how they offered you tea and laughter and more tea
You are who I love, unable to sleep because of the children, the children, the children
You are who I love, picking out oranges and onions in the grocery store, your limbs heavy with grief and rage
You are who I love, invoking Darwish and June, Davis and Grace
You are who I love, calling Congress every afternoon at 3 pm
You are who I love, holding a press conference in front of the scene of carnage, forcing the world to see what has become a daily reality for you
You, reporting and reporting and reporting under the hail of bombs and rockets
You are who I love, calling on your Asian American kin to make connections, to understand the Palestinian occupation in the context of global imperialism and colonialism
You are who I love, drafting a resolution calling for the end of bloodshed, introducing it on the floor of a fractured House
You, sitting on the floor of Congress with hundreds of fellow Jews, singing and chanting in civil disobedience, demanding the end to the genocide in Gaza
You are who I love, grieving on the only land you have ever known
You, longing for home, for safety, lost in echo and scream
You are who I love, hurrying through decimated streets in search of water, food for your family
You rolling up your sleeves to doctor without medicine or equipment
You are who I love, dreaming larger than nations and borders, imagining a world of flow and freedom, cooperation and care
You with knowledge that today is the day for the biggest NO – NO to genocide, NO to the sharpest edge* and bluntest weapon of patriarchy
to make way for the shining YES of a different world
You bringing your queer Black feminist heart and mind to weave a blanket of black and red and green to drape over the shoulders of all your beloveds
You are who I love, speaking up in discomfort, asking questions that rock the boat at work
You are who I love, watching the cars zip past your bus, clutching the sign you painted in the pre-dawn light: CEASEFIRE NOW!
You pulling the blankets over your head
You are who I love, kneeling and praying, sitting and breathing
You—scrolling in anger, whirling into lonely despair—who I love
You sick with fear for your cousin and her wife who haven’t responded to your messages, checking your phone again and again
You are who I love, confused on the sidelines but slowly making your way through the tangle misinformation and lies
You finding your way to the shore where your feet sink into cold sand and small waves wash over your toes—here, here, here
You, reading poems for Palestine, organizing fundraisers
You are who I love, text banking to turn people out for the mobilization, you organizing despite the doxxing, despite your fear
You are who I love, casting spells and making magic for the end of the world
You facing the board of directors, you risking funding to take the stand your organization must take, you are who I love
You are who I love, sitting down to speak the words as simply as you can to your grandmother, love and dread and grief coursing through your body
You, your pen running out of ink, filling page after page in your journal
You are who I love, listening to the sounds that will always be with you until the end: your aching heart beating, your breath catching, then moving through you
You are who I love, struggling through the thick fog of ancestral trauma formed by centuries of persecution to seek clarity in this moment
You, leading the way toward liberation through breath and wail, song and story, poem and prayer, connecting one heart to the next to the next to the next to the next you
~~~
* “Sharpest edge of patriarchy” is a phrase I’m borrowing from Malkia Devich Cyril who used it to describe war.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for all the ways you are showing up, learning, listening, and taking action right now.
Earlier this month, I was working to send you a Halloween/Samhain/Day of the Dead post for the full moon in a week or so. I still hope to send it out, so stay tuned.
In the meantime, take such precious care of yourself, those you love, and those you have yet to love.