By ALAA ALQAISI
Gaza, Palestine
We stepped out with our eyes uncovered.
Gaza kept looking through them—
green tanks asleep on roofs, a stubborn gull,
water heavy with scales at dawn.
Nothing in us chose the hinges to slacken.
The latch turned without our hands.
Papers practiced the border’s breath.
On the bus, the glass held us—
a pond that would not name who stays.
We packed what the skin remembers:
jasmine bruised on the balcony,
a chipped tea glass,
the stairwell’s rain-smell,
a key cold against the tooth.
Soil under our nails would not wash;
we washed around it like a wound.
My mother’s cup cooled where she left it.
My father’s shoes faced the prayer rug, waiting.
An olive taught refusal—
roots clasping dark without asking.
We whispered that lesson and kept failing it,
step after step, leaf after leaf.
Streets rehearsed our names and went hoarse.
The school bell rang with no teacher to answer.
One window lifted its curtain all night,
watching the path we couldn’t return by.
If you meet our eyes, don’t move them.
Witness is a key left warm in the lock,
so the door won’t lie about what doors do.
We are not turning away.
We are leaving the way ground learns a step,
and the step keeps listening for that ground—
the sea keeping our outline in its light.
Alaa Alqaisi is a Palestinian translator, writer, and researcher from Gaza, and a PhD candidate at Trinity College Dublin. Holding an MA in Translation Studies, she explores how literature and storytelling bridge cultures and bear witness to lived realities. Her work appears in ArabLit, Literary Hub, Adi Magazine, and others.
