[timestamp October 11th, 2023]

this is dated & yet in the present
this is dated & its presence
this is dated & presence ongoing

i look ahead to learning how to reconnect flesh
soft torn edges made separate
by blast
by bullet

on an individual level
i am determined to
recombine flesh

on a structural level—
by the time i learn this
practice of suturing
2, 3, 4 years from now
now becomes different
desiccated edges
& now

i know crisis to be continuous

nearly 2 years ago i gave a presentation to a group of surgeons on the health consequences of colonial occupation in Palestine based on The Right to Maim, and proposed a global surgery program to set up temporary trauma centers in light of how occupiers continually shock healthcare infrastructure into rubble, and target surgeons in their sleep. there is a missing of surgeons, trauma surgeons (6-8 years of training),
plastic and reconstructive surgeons (6 years of training). there is a missing of.

today [this is dated & yet in the present] i read that the paramedics who cross the physical fiction (border) are killed by the IOF before they reach a single wounded Gazan.

i am reminded of the choice I must make as a street medic, to brandish a red cross composed of strips of blood red duct tape, at protests in the US against racist police violence. apply the cross & risk rapid arrest. appear blank & no one knows how to turn to you. the offensive thought of course being, street medics make protestors feel safer, remove them to heighten fear and neutralize the antidote to inevitable injury. ambulances, hospitals, surgeons, medical schools make the population feel safer, remove them.

i interview at a medical school today [this is dated], committed to caring for underserved patients. according to a recent statement on their website, Palestinians are excluded from this category.

these are not parallels - these are specific tactics used to seal state sanctioned violence into skin, tissue, bone, brain, heart, leave wounds open to bleed out, to succumb to infection, to lose sight.

i think of sarah kane’s BLASTED. when the hotel walls crumble & the consequence of the Bosnian War interrupt a scene of intimate partner violence. zooming in on an individual’s violence w/n relation & exploding it outward to be extrapolated in the ####s. magnitude of war.

i think of Etel Adnan’s Sitt Marie Rose & the walls of the classroom crumbling amidst the Lebanese Civil war

i think of Ghassan Abu Sittah’s OR in the Al Ahli hospital [this is dated]. the ceiling shattering. rubble falling in on him, his team. the open and vulnerable body-person-gazan he was working on little sleep to repair.

he doesn't post for many hours following the IOF airstrikes on the hospital/s & I worry he has been martyred like __so many__ others.

these are not parallels - these are specific tactics used to seal state sanctioned violence into skin, tissue, bone, brain, heart, leave wounds open to bleed out, to succumb to infection, to lose sight.

this poem is unfinished
as long as there is colonial occupation, this poem is unfinished
as long as there are soft edges to resuture, this poem is unfinished