I open the door.

My books remain on the shelves as I left them last year.

Very cold feel the covers,

warm are the pages,

but most of the words have died.

 

I search for my favorite book,

Out of Place.

I find it lying alone in a drawer,

next to the photo album and my old Nokia phone.

 

The pen inside the book is still intact,

but some drops have leaked.

I find some words breathing its ink,

the pen has been like a ventilator,

but for a few dozens of patients:

 

Home, Jerusalem, the sea, Yaffa,

the rocks, Gaza, the sand,

the sparrow, Cairo, my mother,

Beirut, books, Boston, the school’s walls,

etc.

​

Electricity goes off.

AGAIN!

 

I search for my phone,

The battery almost dead.

A candle, but there is no lighter.

 

The next morning,

I see the book on my table.

I forget why I searched for it.

I cannot even read its title.

 

I see the small ladder leaning

on the shelves.

Not sure why it’s there.

 

Suddenly I see a fly on a book

on the highest shelf.

I place the ladder close to it.

I think it lost a wing, or maybe one

of its legs is broken.

 

The fly does not move.

I ascend the ladder.

 

Explosion!!!

 

Both the fly and I fall,

me on a mattress,

the fly, oh the fly,

a heavy Britannica Encyclopedia volume

smashes it.

 

A bookmark in that volume sticks out.

I open the marked page.

Balfour Declaration.

 

I tell myself,

“That volume, if it had only the 67 words

of that declaration in its pages, not only

the fly, but a whole country,

would be flattened.”

​

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