Day 513/Ceasefire Day 43

Yesterday there was food, today
none.  Trucks barred
from entering.  Never mind, the mother
says to her children:  we will eat anyway.
She goes out with the youngest
to pick greens growing through
the ruins.  Her eldest daughters
gather sticks.  No fuel:  they’ll
build a fire.  Light it with matches.
What they can’t take away, the mother
tells her children, stirring greens
in the one pan they have — what they
can’t steal from us, deprive
us of, is what the land
keeps offering us.  Our land.
The courage of our hands,
our dreams.  They sit,
this mother and her children,
on the broken ground beside
their ruined house, eating.
Second night of Ramadan,
another image of resistance.