By One day my daughter will drink air for the first time.
And I will wonder if
her lungs turned a little blacker
from the world we’ve polluted
with dying screams
and gunpowder.
And maybe her heart will constrict
from the chains they’ve tied
around thousands of her brothers’ wrists.
I wonder how she will hear
her father recite the call to prayer
in her right ear
when the words “Come to prayer, come to success”
drown in the cry of angels
over the death of innocents.
Maybe she will wonder why she was naked
and pure
but everyone around her was clothed
and dirty.
Maybe she will wonder why
The bare-chested, bare-foot, bomb-shelled
count their blessings
and the ones with blessings cannot count anything more
than its price.
And then she will wonder why we call ourselves children of Adam.
I wonder if
when my daughter cries for the first time
she cries for the air she could breathe
the same air
that was suffocating her siblings
because they say when one finger bleeds
the entire body pains
and umbilical cords are not the only cords
that keep us bound.
And if one day she sees me crying instead
and asks why it hurts
I will point to the clouds and say…
“Baby I tried to grow flowers
for their graves,
But it rains.
It rains.
It rains.”
Because we drown tomorrow’s hope
In today’s political gains.
One day my daughter will drink air for the first time.
And I will wonder if
she would have rather stayed in her mother’s belly
instead
because the blood inside us
runs freer than the blood we shed.