It's Still Life

The Architecture of a Moment

A poem written in witness to the children of Gaza; not to explain, but to honour the question of who they were before the world forgot their names.

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The Architecture of Who

Who is this child—
a clinical acronym
for a soul lost in dust?

Who watches
through a veil of tears,
whose stomach is
a hollow ache, a body
that’s forgotten
the weight of fruit?

They are the seventeen thousand.
Or thirty-nine thousand.
Or one million
fading into an inner winter,
curdling slowly
into heat and hunger.

Who will hold
the weight of seeing,
the sorrow of knowing,

and the quiet, fierce agreement
that this must be named?

But who will remember
a name.

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Written for Writers’ Digest Poem-a-Day Challenge, prompt “Who”. The image is ai. Poems/prose and some images are ©Misky 2006-2025.