hyphen youth,
carry on your back
a 2000 mile scar
30 foot wall
12 generation stare
carry on, a story told

the hyphen holds you in between
the golden lie, an ugly dream

(the line unfolds into)
a life written from the margins
taught to carry it in silence

more like a river bearing bodies
more like a bloom of scars on burdened backs
more like the curl of limb and lungs of orange

hyphen youth, carry on
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i am here by your grand design
i am here to paint new pictures
i'm not the first and no longer the last
so give me new lenses from which to burn
to paint new paints

why hide my color in a crowd (that's dead to me)
where we come from holds weight
i beg myself to paint new pictures
embrace the future

"When they demolish our homes, we turn the village’s graveyard into a home. They threaten to destroy it as well. Even if they do, we will dig graves in our own hands and live in them.

We’ll protect our dead and they’ll protect us"

-elderly Palestinian woman from Al-Araqib, a Palestinian-Bedouin village demolished 53 times in a three year period by the Israeli occupation