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.

I smell like ocean and summertime lotion and all of the waves of lime that come onto shore and salt my wounds and sparkle in the sun. I memorized every constellation of pores on your skin and felt every fold of you and tasted the air from your lungs, expelled in ecstasy or sleep. I studied every facet of you through prisms of reflected light, I saw your colors reflected in the leaves and candle flames. I thought I caught a glimpse of you again, but I woke up again, and I just can’t quite remember. You’re in periphery, you’re on the very tip of everything, around the corner of every thought- waiting there for me, to look me in the eyes before I blink. 

I don't want to sound the alarm on my loneliness.
It feels risky like announcing hunger when what
    I really want is my favorite food.
If you're hungry they want you grateful for anything.
But cravings are so specific.
The chance of a kind stranger offering
    the ache of your heart to you
    on a platter.

I am on a different planet.
The plants here are strange and none taste like home.

They say I can never go back.
Even if I went to that space
    time has stripped away the familiar.
I have been under sleep.
I have been buried.

There is so little space here.
I am not small, and I don't know who could fit next to me.

I don't want to sound the alarm.
I want to be a secret.
I want to whisper coded words into clouds.
I want to pray and be heard.

You tell me that you love your solitude. Everything that you say sounds like it came out of my own brain. It doesn’t make sense to me that we are strangers, and yet it makes perfect sense, because I don’t think you can feel this way about anyone who is real. 

When you talk about standing in your room daring the forces of evil to take you on, I know that you were having the same conversation when I said that I was willing to get dragged through the mud. 

Somehow I know that these moments are connected. I know that they happened at the same time on the same day. I know that we are connected by a string through time and space and that on that day, we were on different sides of a black hole. 

And we are staring at each other through the wormhole. The tunnel that distorts the world. 

And this must be how everyone feels, right? Over a million other people must feel this way. Is it just the human experience? Are we all connected in this way? It’s different for me, right?