There is no bearing this weight
but she carries it anyway: little sister
slung like a rucksack across her shoulder,
broken leg dangling, her own eyes limned
with dark shadows, blond hair falling
across her face like a curtain,
gap-toothed attempt at a smile.
As she speaks, she shifts her bundle
of sister—not a burden, not heavy.
She has already trudged kilometers,
shouldering this load beyond her years.
Both girls are small and frail. Too young
for this world, they have only each other:
barefoot child bearing her sister down the road.
Where are they going? How will they live?
The younger child needs a doctor. Her sister
needs…a different universe, a safety net,
a living parent, bread, a jug of water.
But there is no clean water in Gaza,
their parents are dead, their home is destroyed,
and nothing grows in the rubble.
From afar, we carry this knowledge,
a stone we cannot put down.
We bear despair and grief and rage,
the guilt of helplessness,
the pulse of hope already broken.
We bear the urgency of witness,
the fragility of what is human.
Who can help these children stay alive?
Who can stop the dark from seizing them?
The older girl hoists her sister, this burden
that is not a burden, hunches herself
into the weight of love, and walks.
Lisa Suhair Majaj
January 2026
Lisa Suhair Majaj is the author of Geographies of Light (2008 Del Sol Press Poetry Prize), of poems and essays published across the US, Europe, and the Middle East, and of two children’s books. She is also co-editor of four collections of critical essays, including the forthcoming Companion to Contemporary Arab American Literature (Routledge). Her poems have been translated into ten languages, and were displayed in the 2016 exhibition Aftermath: The Fallout of War—America and the Middle East (Harn Museum of Art). Her new poetry volume Why Doesn’t the Sky Love Us? is forthcoming. She lives in Cyprus.
Featured Image: Wilderness. A painting by Lisa Suhair Majaj
(“What We Carry” was first published in Unsilenced: Poems for Palestine. Ed.John P. Portelli. Quebec and Malta: Horizons and Daraja Press.)