After October 7
by Ilana Hutzler
Saturday morning I lay in bed playing the crossword
while bodies lay slumped at the bus stop in Sderot
the world is on fire but it’s 50 degrees and sunny
at the farmer’s market and people our age
laugh don’t they know nothing is funny right now
because you’re dead at the bus stop in Sderot,
dead in your house in the basement hiding in your car
in the parking lot leaving running to the bus stop
where I fell in love two years ago, he and I ran
to catch the 18 bus to work, always rushing
because we layed in bed too long kissing and laughing
in my tiny bedroom that doubled as a bomb shelter,
you’re dead in the bomb shelter, gunmen broke in
threw grenades inside blew off your arm, you’re dead
at the music festival like the one I went to, I worried
about what to wear for weeks, decided on a tie-dye
tank top, I imagine dying in it. Bodies and bodies
beheaded burned alive and bagged, nothing is sad enough
to make a metaphor for a child with no head.
When I lived in Israel there was a war, a smaller one,
and we evacuated to the north and stayed with a family
we’d never met, the mother did our laundry
when we packed three days of clothes and stayed for a week,
as we put our dishes in the sink from homemade breakfast
she offered us lunch, cooked and cooked until we felt
a little less afraid. I texted her yesterday, she responded
with an audio message and in her thick accent said
four of her children’s friends were hosted, two dead four
hosted by Hamas, I scroll backward, she is not saying
hosted she is saying hostage four of her children’s friends
hostages, two dead and four hostages, how do you respond
to a text like that, in the news a son texts his mother
I love you and I’m sorry before a grenade is thrown
into his hiding place, my mother calls me crying,
I call my mother crying, in class I refresh the list
of murdered soldiers looking for names I know, the people
next to me talk about interviewing for internships
and Halloween costumes and sports don’t they know
none of it matters beneath piles of bodies and burnt cars,
the murderers dance on burnt cars, parade naked women
through the streets, if this isn’t terrorism
I guess we’ll all die, but the terrorists want me to be afraid
so I’ll tell a different story, my family friend is called
into the military and there is no food for the soldiers
so his parents go to the grocery store and buy 800 pounds
of chicken and cook it all night despite the sirens,
I should be there cooking chicken, while writing this poem
I get a call and rush out of the library assuming someone is dead
but you are just calling to ask if you can put leftovers in my freezer
because yours is full, how do we go on cooking dinner