17/05/2025
Again, they came —
through cracks in the clay,
through scorched earth and silence,
the poppies arrived,
a quiet crowd in crimson robes
bowing to no one but truth.
Their petals brushed my knees,
another visit, another whisper
from the ones who never left —
the plants,
my ever-faithful kin,
sentinels of memory
and sudden tenderness.
They knew.
The poppies knew.
Their black-eyed centers
stared up at me
like the eyes of starved children
in Gaza —
vast, unblinking,
carrying too much night
for a small body.
And I wept.
Because remembrance is not gentle.
It is sharp like shrapnel
and soft like a fallen petal,
a tension held only by roots
that remember every name
the world forgets.
Palestinians are like poppies.
So were Syrians.
We bloom in chaos,
we grow in disturbed soil,
called stubborn by some,
miraculous by others.
But we know—
it is grief that waters us,
and blood that feeds the bloom.
The deals are done.
The ink has dried
on papers signed with cruelty,
lands traded like coins
in hands that never farmed.
But poppies grow regardless.
And in our region
they do not just symbolize sleep.
They are the red echo
of every body buried without peace,
every home reduced to ash.
They are the flag of mourning
for the ones who were sold
for profit, for silence,
for evil made ordinary.
Still, the poppies come.
Still, the plants surround me.
Still, they speak.
They say:
We are here.
We have always been here.
We remember.
And so must you.
