For Aleppo:
They tell me
the air in Syria smells like blood.
That with each breath,
you feel the hands of martyrs wrap themselves around your neck.
You choke on their lost lives.
Taste the chemicals that slayed them,
the bullets that killed them,
the fires that burned them,
the knives that stabbed them,
the bombs that ripped their bodies apart,
spreading their limbs into the corners of your own body as you breathe
in and out, in and out.
John Grisham doesn’t write about this shit. The gripping murder mystery about the young black man shot multiple times in his car by a police officer doesn’t become a New York Best seller. It does not become a best seller because there is no happy ending. There is no climax. The jury doesn’t find the defendant guilty. There is no justice. There is no peace.
