Response to the Archive: وَادِي “wadi” by andrea a. gluckman

وَادِي “wadi” by andrea a. gluckman

.
his eyes are fixed

on battles visible and invisible–

a boy Janus whose gates never close,

living in a prison where the gates never open.

his smile is distressed and tight,

secured with tiny anchors

often sunk in the deep

of water and sand–

a child’s imagination

drowned in purgatory.

his body is still slight

an arrested child—

of disproportions

trying to hold back a tsunami

with tiny hands,

trying to create a shelter

from the violence he did not create.

not boy, not man,

(but tasked with both)

nassim is

the age of a life not

lived.

a jagged scar encircles

nassim,

a thick fleshy wadi

engraved in new skin

for old wounds.

history’s rites of passage.

a constant reminder of

who he is

and who he is not,

after all,

a wadi is still a wadi, even if

it only rains once a season.

he blushes easily

and cries scarcely,

only in the privacy of

a musty blanket

shared with his baby sister on

the bedroom floor—

close to the safer wall, crumbling yet without windows—

janus cannot close the gates yet.

nassim does not speak

often.

he chooses his words

with the delicacy of carrying

the pot of boiling water

across the camp

for his mother,

and with the pain

of pulling a field of barbs

out of fresh skin—

balanced,

moment

by moment,

by the memory

of a struggle

greater than him

greater than all of us.

with

the grace of a king

in surrender,

nassim seeks

merely

to remain, by fighting

the ephemeral through

sumud

refusing to make

the sophie’s choice

between death by war and death by disease.

nassim knows there are no “better angels” at the gates—

here known as checkpoints–

he must be his own.

nassim sits silently

and traces the wadi,

his body’s map,

winding

his way back home,

where some gates never close

and others will never open.

for nassim of the Palestinian Occupied Territories, age 11

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