I Stopped Being The Sun

Yellow mass flushed like a sun
outside, too far to decorate the sky

Warmth emitted
after a cloudy day

Snoozing for long
To decide, what is the source

It’s not the sun, nor my spirit that breaks through
He used to call me a sun during his rainy days

I stopped being the sun. The night covers me
Maybe, I have missed my path

And my head drained
It is the colonial way

They create and fill us with questions
wrath, and mistrust
As a way of domination
As a way of eroding history

Removing people and exploiting land
They forgot that we have unconquerable hearts
that flame and rebuild themselves from ash.

Tala Albanna

Tala Albanna was born and raised in Gaza. She is a law student, a writer, and an activist in the human rights and environmental fields. She has a strong passion to discover more about the world of animals and nature. She likes to read and she also embroiders (tatreez) in her free time as a way to bond with her ancestral home in Jaffa. She recently received a scholarship to study in the United States.

Donate to a fund for Tala and her family here: https://gofund.me/4f39b99e

Cover photo credit: Al Jazeera English/Gaza Burns/Uploaded on March 21, 2009/Taken on January 6, 2009/The sun sets on another day in Gaza while the skyline burned… at one point in every direction we looked out, we could see smoke billowing into the Gaza skyline (Al Jazeera English)

Leave a Comment