^{Space / Tri-Tech Skills Center - Digital Arts & Filmmaking Student}

The Apple

This Summer, I will learn
to split an apple with my hands.
To break the fruit
effortlessly
and evenly
in two.

This Summer, I will learn
to split the atom in my mind.
To cleanly cleave
all of time
into before
and after.

I’ll rinse my hands
under pristine spigot-water
and wonder
if I’m allowed
to call them clean.

— Millie Rohdenburg

Millie Rohdenburg is an artist and poet from Richland. They can be contacted at millie.rohdenburg@gmail.com

Offering

The earth breathes life into the roots of our feet

The people stomp to the beat of her heartbeat

Seeking symmetry with her respiro

Su lluvia trembles down the cheeks of her children

When the smoke rises to meet

The rising spirits sunken into la tierra sagrada

Drinking the blood offered

The land she shifts

Humanity becomes its own harbinger

A snake eating its own tail

To the end.

— Angelica Carrillo Mendez (she/her)

I would still choose Gaza

If I had the choice,
would I wake up somewhere
untouched by grief,
where the sky is only sky
and not a warning —

where life doesn’t arrive
wearing the face of loss,
where goodbye is not rehearsed like prayer,
and mothers do not tuck away each child’s
every laugh and smile and glance,
as if preparing for their absence —

where children sleep through the night
without learning the grammar of drones
before they learn the names of rain?

You ask me
if I would choose another life
far from all this weight of agony.

Maybe I would wake lighter.
Maybe my heart would not carry
so much rubble.
Maybe memory would be a garden
instead of scattered ash.

But still —

I would choose Gaza.

I would choose her cracked streets
that recognize my footsteps,
the sea waves that whisper of
our longing to every border.

I would choose the call to prayer
weaving through broken minarets,
the smell of bread at dawn,
and old men lifting their shutters
as if nothing had been destroyed.

I would choose the laughter that survives,
the way we speak without words,
with eyes that have learned too much.

Because Gaza is not only pain.
She is what remains of me
when everything else is taken,

every laugh that refused to die,
every hand that shared its last bread
and still said: forgive me, it is not enough.

How could I leave what built me
and still call myself whole?

So if you ask again —

if I were given another life,
another country, another fate—

my soul would still walk barefoot
toward Gaza.

Again.
Again.
Again.

— Huda Skaik, Gaza Strip

This poem appears on wearenotnumbers.org, where emerging writers from Palestine tell their stories and advocate for their human rights.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Every month, we publish Palestinian poetry to help combat Israel’s attempts to erase Palestine’s contributions to history and the arts.

Haunted by Claddagh

I remember the river first -

how the water cradled our silence,

how your fingers curled into mine,

warm, familiar, as if your hand had always belonged there.

The world softened around us,

a quiet promise whispered in the rustle of leaves,

the faint scent of earth and your skin

mingling with the fading light.

I wanted to stay there forever —

two shadows tracing the same slow breath.

You said you needed to fly —

to break the cage you saw in my arms,

but I only wanted to open the window

and watch your hair catch the wind,

to hold the space where your wings could stretch

without fear or doubt.

You once told me about the ring you dreamed of —

the one with the heart, the hands, the crown —

not for its shape,

but for the story it carried.

Loyalty. Friendship. Love.

You didn’t wear it,

but I saw it in everything you reached for.

I held it in my hands for weeks,

thinking of the day I would give it to you —

not to bind you, but to say:

I see you. I choose you. As you are.

We talked of handfasting —

binding not just our fingers,

but the parts of ourselves

we whispered only to each other —

the fears, the scars, the secret dreams

we cradled in the quiet between words.

But then you slipped away —

like the butterfly you always were —

a fragile, trembling flame

that flickered just beyond my reach,

beautiful, wild, impossible to hold.

I was left with echoes —

the soft exhale of your breath against my neck,

the ghost of your laughter threading through empty rooms,

and the ache of a love

that no longer had a voice.

I hate those wings —

how they carried you far from me,

how they trembled with restless longing

even as they pulled you away.

But I would have held you anyway,

because you were the only one

who made me believe

that love could be enough.

Now I walk the labyrinth alone,

carrying the weight of our story —

knots of pain and hope intertwined,

and every beat of this broken heart

still calls your name.

I still love the you I met,

the you who saw the man I am.

You held me like I was made to be,

then let go like I was never real.

— Joshua Liston (he/him)

An Ode to Richland

We pull the water in summer’s heat
deep from the river’s store,
and throw it all across the sand,
for corn and grapes and more.

We dam the river to hold it back,
else it simply washes through,
and if it did we’d damn the skies
and move away from you.

But as it is, we survive the heat
and harvest the melons and hops,
and hydrate our bodies
with beer and wine and great American schnapps

We live with sage and sand and snakes,
and are neighbors with nuclear waste,
and we’re far away from the Seattle crowd
who drives all day in haste.

We’ll take the quiet star kissed nights,
we’ll take the heat by degrees
but stop the rush to one way streets
pretty pretty please.

— Larry Morris (he/him)

Larry Morris is a poet, artist, and retired Lutheran Pastor.