Body Is Here, Heart Is There - A Tribute to the Druze of Al-Suwayda

I brew tea in the quiet morning
but my hands shake.
The cup doesn’t warm me
not when the air is heavy
with names I haven’t heard in days.
Names I may never hear again.

My body moves
buys bread, nods politely,
pretends to live
but my heart is back there,
pressed to the dirt roads of Suwayda,
listening for footsteps
that may never return.

I wake to numbers,
to grainy photos,
to silence.
And every silence is a scream.

How do you carry this grief
across borders?
How do you mourn
when your mourning
can’t reach the graves?

I see the smoke in my sleep.
I see a child’s shoe,
a doorway torn open,
a father who couldn’t protect.
And I see the world
look away.

I am here,
safe
and it feels like betrayal.

I light candles that flicker with guilt.
I write poems no one reads.
I scroll and scroll,
looking for proof they are still alive.

What do you do
when you can do nothing?
When love isn’t a shield,
and prayers don’t stop bullets?

I carry them in every heartbeat,
in every breath I don’t deserve to take in peace.
I whisper to the sky:
Let them live. Let them live.

But the wind only brings more names.

My body is here,
but my heart
is buried
beneath Suwayda’s soil
still waiting
for the sun to rise again.