Flowers Are Not The Only Fragile Thing
a 6-year-old palestinian-american was stabbed 26 times for being muslim, police say.
his mom couldn’t go to his funeral because she was stabbed, too.
—CNN News.
iii
we don’t question death for the pain inflicted by man;
for the hollow dug in our hearts by man; because, sometimes,
death fruits peace & mostly, all that man has given birth to is chaos.
give your eyes wings—see a man shoveling through debris
to collect the remnants of his four children after Israel’s bombing.
see Heba Zagout. see 17 family members of Fady Joudah—a huge home
lacerated by every line succeeding bomb blasts’ history.
ii
the word Wadea means peaceful. means a small boy wearing a golden smile
enough to break a dark-ash rock. means a boy knotting english words onto
his father’s tongue. flowers are
not the only fragile thing. say, a six-year-old boy, like butterflies, is tender
enough to be squeezed with palms. say, he is an angel with (f)light who couldn’t
fight the man catapulting him
to heaven with a knife. say, he is a human—he is a muslim—he is peaceful.
say, he became a stranger to his name when the edge
of the knife kisses his intestines.
i
what do we do if the entrance to our home is the origin of our sorrow?
what will Hanaan Shahin do when each suture of her knife-cut is the water
seeping her to the floor her child laid on, lifeless?
scar is the parental gene of pain, the first filial generation before death.
& no matter how much you gather, saliva can’t fill an ocean bereft of water.
ghazal with your name
for Shukroh
{شكرا= name}
{شكراً= thank you}
On the day of your death, I wept but barely enough.
Perhaps I was too young for grief, my sorrow too
fleeting to be named sorrow.
—Samuel A. Adeyemi
one day, we returned from school & شكرا
was already spat out saliva. yes, you, شكرا.
in our hands, soft like green leaves, you were a fresh tomato,
& for that, we languaged our gratitude to God, tenderly with شكراً.
your time was so pored like the space between two fingers.
did you enjoy those moments or were we too much of a pest, شكرا?
today, i saw you evaporating & i reduced the hotness of the sun.
afterward, i shared lollipops with the kids around & they said, شكراً.
despite knowing it’s a thank you, i ransacked your face round the area.
but like shadows in the absence of light, you were a vapor, شكرا.
just as wallahi & innalillahi in the mouth of hausa men, every
thanksgiving i receive these days dissolves into memory; yours, شكرا.
Abdulbasit Oluwanishola, SWAN V, has works up/forthcoming in A Long House, Poetry Journal, Poetry Column, Ake Review, Tahoma Literary Review, SUSPECT Journal, Ninshãr Arts, BAM Quarterly, Rowayat, Haven Spec, The Marbled Sigh, Invisible City, and elsewhere. He tweets @abdulbasitoluwa. You can also find him on Bluesky @oluwanishola.bsky.social.
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