Starvation, by Fatema in Gaza (translation)

I want flour, but I can’t afford it, and hunger ravages me like fire devours dry wood. I speak to my stomach every evening, as if apologizing for a helplessness I cannot change. I raise my hands to the sky—not out of greed, but because I’m tired of stretching them toward the earth in vain. My dreams have crumbled into scraps, and every wish born in my heart dies on my lips. I long for a piece of bread to share the pain of hunger with me, for my mother calling out: ‘Lunch is ready.’ But there is no lunch, no mother, no call— only hunger calling, filling my ears with an unbearable voice: ‘You won’t eat today… just like every day.’”**