Last Message From A Burning Aleppo, To The Uncaring World

last messages should be short, otherwise
they lose their authenticity, how can
someone be in the throes of death
and still write, like they have all the
time in the world?

last messages should be urgent, they should
sound like the bombs falling, the ground
shattering on impact, they should feel heavy
as the roof crashing down on unwitting
shoulders, they should feel light
as the settling dust in tomorrow’s morning sun

last messages should be politically correct, otherwise
they’re just fads, if you curse someone,
if you sling some mud at your
religion, at the justice societies of the world,
if you name drop countries which could’ve
saved you, but didn’t, it’s just propaganda

last messages should be vicious, you should
be raging against the dying lights, you should
be caught fuming with your last breath,
shaming with your dying children scooped up in your arms,
and when rescuers arrive, when the walls
are finally torn down and your corpse is found,
it should have eyes burning like ember,
not peaceful, at the end
of this survival, worse than death

last messages should be names of people
you’re leaving behind,
father, mother, daughter,
brother, spouse, so newsreaders
know, they were the ones you thought of last

last messages should be prayers to Allah,
or whoever you pray to, it doesn’t matter,
it is just identification, that you were pious,
that you didn’t deserve this end,
that wherever you have departed to,
would be safer than this hell

last messages should be unfinished tweets
last messages should be shaky handheld videos,
heartbreaking but shareable,
so we can share your pain, not lessen it,
not ask why it existed in the first place,
not ask what our role in it was,
not stand up against it,
wherever we are, however we can

last messages should be short
so here’s one, I’d like to leave behind,
my last legacy, the only thing the world
will remember me by

“when you find this, I’ll be dead
and you’ll wash your hands and
eat your warm dinner, when you
find this, there’ll be no one to
mourn me, for everyone here
was long dead before you knew

we’ll never meet, and you’ll never shake my hand,
but this memory will remain, of how
the world shook around me tonight

and in the flash of a lightning, I was gone”