364 days -10/6/24
How do I share in this life and excitement with you, when my mind is full of genocide.
I wish it wasn’t.
And I just want the means to explain that my mind is full genocide. That a day doesn’t pass where I haven’t yet learned of the last hospital, apartment building, city center that was destroyed while i slept. That in the past two weeks, I wake up every morning trying to locate the most recent attacks on a map to track how close they are to people that I love. That I can’t join in in all of the merriment of my own existence, because this is a part of it.
And you can’t just send that in an email. Or preface every conversation with it. It’s just true. It’s just a part of what it is to be alive every day. And it’s the most privileged of horrors that I experience. That I would take to a screen to complain to the ether that I can’t focus on the moments of joy or even peace, because headlines, phone calls, images, agony, cruelty, hopelessness, resigned acceptance, and bone deep searing rage just carry me through the motions every day. Seriously, I’m no good for a phone call or a catch up or a “let me tell you about my day” right now.
Because Beirut is burning. Because my elders cast hollow gazes speaking whitewashed horrors to protect their spirits. Because we have no choice, and the world keeps turning amidst our extermination, and it’s all some political proxy play where we’ve been cast as extras, and so our only role is to stay alive until they decide to stop. Just hope we make it through the next US election from our tattered and stolen lives a thousand miles away.
Then pick up the pieces with baited breath, knowing it will come again.
Rhie Azzam Morris 