Written by Rushna Ahsan
(inspired by MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech and the poem “If I Must Die” by Refaat Alareer)
I have a dream
What does a child in Gaza dream about?
An empty sky over a crackless roof over a clean floor
A full house and a bulletproof door
Food that doesn’t shoot them
When they reach to take a bite
A place where hunger isn’t a crime
Where orphans don’t awake to a perpetual, pervasive plight
I have a dream
What does a child in Gaza dream about?
To be dug out from beneath the bodies
Of a thousand crushed siblings
With skulls shattered like glass globes
Holding a thousand crushed dreams,
Falling stars that hit the ground and strobed
Leaving a mountain of rubble and
A thousand screams
From a thousand fatal follies
Of a government who eagerly watched
Watching, waiting for them to climb out
Only to let the bombs be dropped
Like a child’s game of marbles
Carelessly thrown from a monster’s claws
I have a dream
What does a child in Gaza dream about?
Is there room for dreams in a sky full of smoke?
If they must die and we must live
If a child can look at a kite in the sky
and think for a moment an angel is there
Sent to resuscitate a war’s victims
To ease the pain of their torn limbs
To wash the taste of blood from their mouths
To darken the glare of rockets hitting the ground
To stifle the stench of flesh and fire
With hope in what the truth will inspire
Who am I to not spare a dream for them?