Glass for Breakfast

Photograpy by Gabriel Ferneini

Glass for Breakfast

My coffee spills over the counter.

Everything looks like blood.

Who isn’t sick. I open the windows. 

I oil my hair in rosemary.

October in Beirut can mean many things:

wildfires, respite from the heat. 

I walk past the Mediterranean Sea,

then back home. These are not my feet.

My soup hardens into clumps.

How dare the little wind put me to sleep.

I wake up to check the numbers. 

7000 killed in Gaza. No ceasefire. 

I chop more beetroot. Rim Banna was alive. 

She sang of butterflies and night.

I can’t listen. My hair shreds like paper.

The jar of raspberry jam breaks onto the floor,

and I dream you ate glass for breakfast.

It wasn’t the first time. 

When we gather we still light candles. 

We hate our guilt. We love the same journalists. 

Wish they knew. Wish they didn’t have to.

In Baalbeck the orchards are so yellow.

The apples plop like stones. No money 

to water our lands, the farmer says.

Did I hear correctly. Do you see what we see.

Every day someone tells me to leave—

‘Beirut is next.’

Don’t tell me Lebanon. Don’t tell me Palestine.

Look at the apple tree. See how the grapevine

wraps itself around the trunk. Can’t let go.

God make our rage count for something.