With the first stones of the First Intifada,
I learned the rebuilding of my world
with thumbs in mud, not marble,
sheepskin stretched across olive tree twigs.

Brushes dabbed on UNRWA flour sacks,
ration-stamped ghosts bloom into orchards.
A boy with a door that still closes,
an olive tree outside, the settlers forgot to cut.

Art as resistance, refusing erasure,
imagination with its back to the wall,
signing its name in cracked clay and smoke,
the skies hanging from barbed wire.

Every scene is saying no
every line a road I’m not allowed to walk,
every frame a document, a moment,
steady as a heartbeat in the flour dust.

Inspired by the artists of Palestine, making the most of what they have left available to them.