Rewind

By: Jaweerya Mohammad

History has a way

Of coming back again,

Like the ocean waves

It travels back

And hurdles toward

Land again,

 

The Trail of Tears

Have accumulated,

Forming a river

  That runs eastward,

It drowns the people,

Leaves bodies scattered,

The people forced to leave

Look back

One last time,

Before they say,

‘It’s just like what happened

In Sabra and Shatila’,

 

Olive trees uprooted,

Land razed

Of all that is breathing,

Foreign faces

With foreign tongues

Claim the fruits

Of natives’

Back breaking work,

And filthy money

Is pocketed

Into a filthier agenda,

It’s the same show

That Belgium

Performed on the Congo,

 

The Berlin Wall’s

Been broken down

But another stands tall,

Doubling its height,

It snakes away

Through the West Bank,

Tearing family seams apart,

Devastating damage

Like that of separating

Fish from water,

 

And like the Civi

l Rights Movement

Palestinians fight for justice,

Checkpoints litter the streets,

Hosed down with teargas

If they speak,

Asking for equality

In a land they were born in

Is beyond irony,

 

Airstrikes hit Gaza,

Screams of agony

Vibrate loudly,

Limping bodies

With bloody khafiyas appear,

And amidst them

Are ghosts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,

 

These history events

Close and unravel,

Things we claimed

Would never happen again

Have found their way

Into the present,

It is our silence

That has acted

As a time machine

Making history Rewind.