We Live We Live

<sup>For Palestinian poet Reefat Alareer, with lines from his poems

We live.
We live.
We do.
                  ——Refaat Alareer</sup>

You were killed today            December 7th            
            my birthday     It was today    son of Shujaiya
 

                        in an Israel airstrike                you were killed          
            visiting            your brother’s home   in Gaza City
 

Today, the anniversary                       of when my grandfather
            only 12 years old                    climbed onto the roof
 

                        of his dormitory                      to watch the bombs
            fall on the American naval base         built over Puʻuloa
           
Your brother               your sister                   and four of her 
            children were killed, too                     You were                  

                        just a few years                       younger than me
 

            This morning              after Israel’s birds       of death       
   

screeched down                      toward you                  my children woke up             
            on their own    in Honolulu     though it was still dark
 

                        their breath      like soil           their voices     like soil          
             their kisses     like soil           blinking when touched by rain    
      

And my youngest        rubbing her eyes                     asked if 
            it was my birthday—              And am I now 47?—       
          

                        before singing             in our ancestors’ language     
            we are learning                       to speak together         after 
 

the wreckage   of English                   and Americans
            And my oldest            who is learning                       to speak
 

                        in speech therapy        giggled            in her grogginess       
            then sang                     her own song  too     
           

And what did I do       to deserve                    such tenderness                      
            this early morning?     Or to live                     this long     
                

                        having heard bombs and guns            fired only
            from a distance?                      Having stood   safely 
 

                        scared  as a child                     and angry        as an adult     
            at the sound     of our lands and waters—         Kahoʻolawe      
         

Pōhakuloa                   Mākua                Wahiawa                     battered
            bruised burned poisoned                         in live fire practice? 
 

                        By bombs that may have        fallen on you   or close 
                                    to you on those you loved full-hearted          recklessly
 

                                              those you learned to cling to even harder            bombs 
                                    that may have hurt or killed children like mine            who
 

                        could still sing?                       And you                      what did you do 
                                    to deserve                    your shorter poet’s life                except 
 

                                                tell the truth    and sow the seeds        of songs 
                                   in your students        except grow your        love for them         
 

                        for your people           for your land               and country                
                                    for the promise                        within the wreckage
 

                                                that is this English                  echoing 
                                    all the way here                       to Honolulu     where I resisted
 

                        opening my TikTok feed        to savor my children’s sleepy 
                                    sweetness                    a little longer               before facing 
 

                                                that birthdays are death days              too?  

           
                                    That each day              bombs and schools     
                        hospitals and houses               fall                   each day children     
  

     are pulled from rubble          children          are pulled away
                        crying           from rubble             that buried              their mothers                        
       that they feel                  alone                         that their hurt seeps 
                        down               into the dirt                    as they look heaven in the eye
 

                                    somewhere in Gaza?              That they         have written   
                        their names     and their parents’ names         on their limbs
 

                                    so their bodies             or maybe just these parts                   
                        if that is all                         that’s left                     can be known            
 

                                    to anyone                    who finds them?     
   

     That                 if they          if you                must die          
            so easily uprooted       from the earth             so harshly unsung
     

let it be a tale                and why not    write poems   to birth 
            the strongest words                    of love             like rocks?
 

                        like seeds?                   like songs?      like names? 
            And why not               hold those rocks          in your hands?
                      

Your arms?            Pull them              to your chest       like children   
          lighting         the darkest            of birthday mornings?
 

                        Why not feel               their full weight                      and cling 
                        even harder         to live            to live                dear poet 
 

                        of Shujaiya                  of Gaza           of Palestine                
                        just before                  they                  just before         you

                                                                                                                            take flight? 

Copyright © 2024 by Brandy Nālani McDougall. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 15, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“‘We Live We Live’ was written for the poet Refaat Alareer while I was working through so much grief and trauma from my personal life and tracking and witnessing the genocide of Palestinian families and communities. I learned on my forty-seventh birthday that Alareer, along with several of his family members, had been killed by an Israeli airstrike. I was still going through a very difficult divorce, being a single parent who was caring for two children, and trying to balance that with the work I was doing as an ʻŌiwi poet, scholar, and teacher. I was also still grieving Lahaina and the Lahaina people after the wildfires. To say that my heart was broken would barely scratch the surface of my despair. And then, in December, I got the news that Alareer, who had also been in his forties, who had also believed in the promise and hope of poetry, who wrote of love and community in the face of ongoing Israeli settler colonialism and genocide, and who taught so many students about the power and beauty and hope within words, had died. I had been struggling to write, and Alareer’s words and spirit helped. His poetry brought so much hope to me when I most needed it. This poem comes from so much gratitude for that generosity of hope.”
—Brandy Nālani McDougall