“Children found ‘butchered’ in Israeli kibbutz…” – CNN

I dream a rocket’s aftermath smells of cracked pepper,
that it sprays not blood and shrapnel but mint leaves,

ice clinking in delicate hand-blown glass; that its
thunder is a hundred-thousand bumblebees come to

pollinate a black-and-white world, devoid of flowers
because the sun is playing dead beneath a dead star

and all the water is in IV bags; that I’m in a bed and
through the hole that was once a window I see blue

splattered everywhere, fresh as paint; that I ask Mom how
the Mediterranean made it so far inland, why the flags are

gone, the checkpoints. I awake like a drugged hostage
scared not of death of but of pain and think that love

can’t dull the pain or put it off for long. No, all love can do
is ask where it hurts, and hate? Hate refuses to even look.