Day 28: My Hometown

My hometown rocks bombs made of paper and steel
It is equal parts pomegranate and salt water
Rummages through ashes of hopes and history
and tourists lined up for a view

My hometown weeps for steady soil and handshakes
Unbroken promises or steel embedded dreams
It is the dream of antiquated generations and
adolescents and sometimes
even me

My hometown’s rockets speak Russian
and whiz through Diaspora
It is a fingernail in the much larger
ocean of the universe
But it sticks on my lungs like the
labored breath of its shade
The smoke of Jaffa or the
symphony of sirens as the sun sets
on another week

Here
echoes are the only thing we can all agree on
The neutral nature of sound when it drips off tongues

Like the notes spoken when you ask if I’m Jewish
Upon my yes-
“It’s pretty fucked up what’s happening in Israel”
Word
But I am not the Gaza strip
Not the walls of women wailing as their houses are leveled
Not the dismantled boy whose healthcare
is on the other side of a checkpoint
I am more Rachel Corrie than the bulldozer
I am never the bulldozer
Or the soldier who’s only Arabic is “STOP or I’ll shoot”

I do not hold a PhD in conflict resolution

But I do know this

When my eyes roll back for sleep
there is a firework of a Tel Aviv
sunset burned on my resting corneas
Wholeness exists for me only in the
desert of the south
Or the shuk on a bustling Friday
Scents of roasted chick peas and
spiced teabags
Real and comfortable
like home

My hometown taught me how to coexist over
Arak in Ashkelon bars
Wake to shakshuka with sabras in hotel rooms
And worship stars for peace from bomb shelters
my students used as a library
in the Golan

So when I wake up at night
sweaty with nightmare
It is my hometown anthem pumping in my eardrums
Like the soundtrack of my own funeral

My hometown-
I
am
tethered to you
So please, for my sake,
Could you learn how to behave?