I Don't Want to Love You, But I Do by Cecilia Lucass

You were born out of death to a life in a cage
Where bombs are not the only reason people die
Fed by the violence of hunger and homelessness
Raised by colonialism
Your heart and your will still grew strong

You scare me
Not just because they tell me to be scared
Not just because they repeat, repeat, repeat
The story of 1983
Begging me to understand
Americans are worth more than Lebanese

Why do they never tell me about Jihad al Bina
That you have created so much
Saved so many lives
Improved so many more

It scares me
When I admit to myself
That I would be more scared without you
If I still took the time to see

To see the violence that does not just fall from the skies
that exists in hunger and homelessness
in colonialism

It scares me
That my hope is tangled up
In actions I would never want to commit

But I don't sleep much these days
And I've tried hard
But I haven't found
Anything
to give me hope that they will listen

They repeat, repeat, repeat
The story of Gaza withdrawal
Hoping we won't see
The violence that continues
That kills in so many ways
Hoping we will now support it
Or at least stop looking

They insist talk does not work
When there is no one to talk to
It is hard to find an interlocutor
When you're not willing to listen
To see
To feel

How do you keep faith that talk will work
When even they are insisting it won't?

I am learning to have hope in you
I am learning to see you as so much more
Than those actions I would never want to commit

You amaze me.
Born out of death to a life in a cage
Raised by colonialism
You did not accept imprisonment as natural
You did not accept hunger as justice
You did not accept
the ceaseless killing in so many ways
Of those next to you
Or those farther away

I love you
But I will never be yours
I don't want you inside me
You are too male for me

And I cannot, gratefully, fully silence the voice that insists:
Some deaths you did accept
Including of some who were listening

That is why the full statement that the question-marks pry me with reads:
It is sad, but I'm learning to have hope in Hizbulla

Maybe it is the naivety
of one whose life has never been directly threatened
I still believe:
Be the change you want to see in the world.