Written piece
When The Truce Ends
Mona Zaneefer
Sri Lanka
About this piece
The poem reflects how it felt, as an outsider, to observe the 4-day truce in Gaza in November 2023 from behind a screen. But this distance was snipped once I saw the wife of Sri Lanka's Palestinian ambassador tear up at a local fundraiser. Her and Gaza's pain: plain and tangible.
I walk along the beach with them
The kids that play on a swinging set.
How quiet their future beams today.
No bombs. No dread. No counting bodies.
It’s the sea that enters their ears
The sound of a long sleep and rest.
But it belies
and my heart knows.
My heart that presses against a cork,
It screams to explode and follow
the sea.
Here’s the ambassador’s wife tearing up.
You no longer are behind a screen.
Prayer, still my heart,
I just witnessed your grief first hand.
The hearts on the beaches I longed to hug
Have stretched over me and become my skin.
Oh, when the truce ends,
when they rain their bombs and you begin your count,
Prayer, be louder than the sea.