Grey Bear Culture Magazine

I’m afraid to close my eyes, 
O mother,

your eyelashes raise one question after another. 
There is a story in your eyes—speak it. 
Words yawn on my tongue; 
they’ve lived there long enough. 
Arise, O rubble, 
Come out of me!
Perhaps I could breathe,
with a body freed from shrouds.
Can we tidy the house one last time 
before we’re displaced? 
Can we photograph it for memory— 
Store our laughter, our tears, and our screams— 

then leave? 
O sea stacked before us 
like a shy embrace 
in a world not ours, 
Can you send our echo to nearby oceans
so a giant whale strikes the occupier’s base? 
Can we invent a new alphabet 
for fear, for pain, for home, 
So the world hears 

That gray, continuous sound above us— 

Buzzing planes, 
Roaring rockets 
Above green, above ruin, 
Above a gravestone 
Scrawled in charcoal on a burnt house, 
The trace of a Firebolt?

A thousand times, the eyes sip from the sky 
while we search for warmth 

to gently carry us to sleep

under our balcony,
a seamless sleep that tickles the stars.
I want… to sleep. 
I dreamed of some leader speaking— 
do you hear, mother? 
I see you laughing, feeding the birds. 
I see you playing on the swing of paradise, 
Iridescent colors glowing in a rainbow slumber, 
Like a bottle shaken—dreams all mixed inside. 
O mother, I swear I saw it: 
One shroud in Gaza holding 
the bodies of three martyrs.
I became a worn, wounded body 
groaning with pain. 
I want to hear the heartbeat of the sun— 
or the heart itself… that sponge 
which has grown hard. 
That’s how we walk—on feathers— 
until we reach the peak of exhaustion 
In full daylight and say:
We shall live here.

By Souad Zakarani

– Souad Zakarani is a contemporary Moroccan poet and writer. She writes in German, English, Spanish and Arabic. Her works featured in several anthologies worldwide such as Poems for Rich, centenary Project, Oldham Poetry, Well Read, Hooligan Street, AVA the University of Vienna’s student magazine for comparative literature & culture, Hooligan street poetry, Revista Sofón. Romanian/Australian Anthology of Contemporary Poetry & Prose , Morecambe Poetry Festival Anthology. Recognition: One of her poems, “Weiß,” was shortlisted for the Ulrich Grasnick Lyrikpreis in 2025. Her poem “Sauberer Erde “,third-placed in Friedrich Schiller International poetry Competition 2025.