Shahd Alnaouq is a young Palestinian writer from Gaza and author of Our Pulse Against the Drones, published by Coastal Lines Press. Read and support her work here.
To My Future Daughter by Shahd Alnaouq
Don’t come, for this land has no room for children.
It is famine,
It is carnage,
It is a stolen sky where no kite can rise.
Don’t come, for this world is dressed in lies.
Its institutions are built on paper.
Its humanity is hollow as dust.
You deserve clean air that tastes like morning,
a dress that shines like spring,
hands stained by paint and chalk, and not by blood.
You deserve a house, not a tent that trembles in the wind,
with a wall strong enough to hold your weary back,
and a bed instead of cracked earth
alive with ruin and mosquitoes.
You deserve a life freer than mine.
A joy that does not vanish in the roar of genocide,
that does not break when fire splits the night.
So don’t come –
until the occupation is buried, until its roots are ash,
until the world chooses mercy over silence.
May you inherit not rubble, but gardens, not grief,
but the language of play.
May you live the day I was never given.
That is why I call you, with all the love in me.
Stay, until the world is worthy of you.
