drawing histories

Maisoon drew with pencil the history etched into the walls, the sparks of weddings that never were outside the window into the black sky, the cracks between the stones unhealed scars, the mud the dried up blood of life unborn, the dust beneath her legs all those tomorrows that never were. It was a sketch of her grandmother's story the story of all grandmothers the home of all mothers only this one room. Into this one room she poured their laughter from before and also their grief from after and the blood shed.

- khulud, edited from Haifa Fragments, a novel forthcoming by Spinifex Press