To Amal (Because Your Name Means Hope)
       

How can one think of better
days when streets
swarm
with armed men,
their uniforms
changing
with
the drift of war
their faces the same,
their eyes, your son's eyes.

Amal, your name means hope,
yet years
go by, darkening
days with violent ink,
night's pulse
resounding
through splattered walls,
treacherous alleys.
And what's left
of your sweet name,
when deafened
by the sound of anger,

you dream you're lost in Beirut's
neighborhoods,
in search
ofa way home
in the midst
of rubble,
faceless gunmen

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Copyright © 2019 Hedy Habra All rights reserved
from Collateral Damage
Glass Lyre Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission