Saturday, January 13, 2024

THE EARRING

by Heather H. Thomas


Hamas fighters stormed the Nova festival on 7 October and killed hundreds.


The evening river is gray jade, 

the tree line charred pink. 

 

Rose quartz earring

rescued from the roadside, 

shelters in my palm.

 

I remember Jerusalem—the golden

Dome of the Rock hazed out

in dust storms, random stabbings 

 

canceling my trip 

to the Temple Mount

also called Al-Aqsa Mosque. 

 

Different people worship the same places, 

sometimes under different names.

 

Red alert on D’s phone—incoming 

missile—D says she leapt

from her car into a ditch. 

 

My birthday, I sit alone in a Tel Aviv cafĂ©, 

alarm shrieking—yet none move

to shelter, everyone chatting, trusting 

 

the Iron Dome to intercept.

 

Few can speak of it now: 

trance music, dawn cocktails, 

missile light mistaken for fireworks, 

 

then sudden noises of death—

 

After, women’s bodies mutilated, 

some missing the bottom half—

 

Survivors almost not 

here—eyes hollow, 

speechless they shake                         

                                                

with the silence of living.

 

The darkness you saw, we’re going to bring back 

the light, therapists tell them. 

 

Sometimes only a small body 

part remains, a finger, a foot, a hand, 

                                                                  

trace of mascara on eyelashes, 

an earring she put on that morning.



Author’s NoteThe poem blends details, which were reported in The New York Times and BBC, of the violence at the Nova festival with memories of my 2015 visit to Israel. The detail of the earring was reported by the BBC as an example of tiny objects, along with actual body parts, which were all that remained of some victims.  


Heather H. Thomas is a poet from Reading, Pennsylvania, the author of Vortex Street(FutureCycle Press) and five other poetry collections. Recent work has been published in Barrow Street, Cutthroat, New Verse News, Pedestal Magazine, and The Wallace Stevens Journal. Her work is translated into six languages, including Arabic.