I often feel like I'm living under water, where everything has the texture of a memory. The lights flare through prisms of waves and reality is slippery. Images repeat themselves with slight variations that no one else seems to notice. Sometimes I reach out my hand around me, drag it through the liquid I'm floating in, hoping to touch someone else existing in my sphere—terrified to touch something else floating in the darkness.

That's what it feels like to know you exist. That's what it feels like to search for you. To not be entirely sure I want to find you. 

I have lost my fellow humans.
They have disappeared into the darkness—
their humanity abandoned just outside the cave,
blood on their knees as they crawled away from the horrors outside.

But I can hear them screaming from the depths.
My heart has broken a million times over for Palestine.

My soul is like dust, but my bones are in tact for no reason.
I am alone here.

My mouth is open in a silent scream, and the void stares back at me unfeeling.
I have lost my fellow humans.

My family is gone—
their eyes are cold and empty.

Our souls are dead and rotting,
like the bodies of the children under rubble,
buried and forgotten and silent.

I have drowned a million times over, but it doesn’t matter.
Breath still finds my lungs for no reason.

I am not an innocent child.

I am not innocent.

Humanity has devoured itself in fear,
and now I fear humanity.

I am alone here.

I am alone.

I am stuck there
I cannot escape
My toe stuck in the tide-pool
My face buried in the ocean
Breathing salt and wet
Refracted shadows inside me
Light drips across my eyes and cheeks
I have gone beyond
Transcended
The illusion has broken
Or just begun
Something is broken
My soul or yours
There is laughter and touch
I sit here alone
You've slipped from the memories
But I cannot move on
I built a home here
I wander the halls and remember
The loneliness is sharp because it was only us— no one else knows
It is so precious I cannot speak of it— my vibrating teeth could tear it to shreds
I can see it in my mind and feel it in my hands
Is it gone
Is it gone forever
I am walking backwards towards the future
I cannot turn away from you
I cannot look behind me
I cannot peel my eyes from the void
Your absence is fascinating— illuminating
I know we're never looking at the same sky
But I feel your presence in this world
And I think I chose this
A tiny, beautiful thing
By the time I opened my hand, you had melted
But I remember
And I'm sorry you couldn't meet me
And I forgive— not you, not for this
But I remember
Perhaps I am frozen because it is cold and ice is permanent here— winter
My mortality— a desperate inhale with no release
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck
You'll never read this
And isn't that the point.