By Saed, Gaza Strip, Palestine, April 7, 2026
I carry in my bag keys with no doors—
keys to a house whose trace I have never found.
In my city, I wander among heaps of rubble, searching for the meaning of a street that has lost its features, whose memory has scattered across its bends and corners.
As for the memories, they could not bear the fate of their owners, now drowning in the tents of displacement. So they evaporated, hiding their details from the cursed sky of the city.
The tent is my shelter and my horizon.
Its key is a rope tied to the feet of my beloved.
And I tame the streets of tents so they may accept my footsteps, charging them with new memories kneaded with a new sorrow.
The cities of tents are my homeland.
And the days in my homeland move with a hybrid rhythm—not monotonous or dull, but a rhythm that gnaws at the soul, devouring whatever falls from it.
The days push against one another, colliding like distorted creatures with no shadows.
We awaken only for a faceless day to crash into our faces, sketching a shattered daylight that leads us into an evening stripped of its time and dreams, drowning in renegade nightmares.