So We Don’t Sleep by Souad Zakaran

Gabriel González Encarnación

So We Don’t Sleep

I’m afraid to close my eyes, 
O mother,

your eyelashes raise one question after another. 
There is a story in your eyes—speak it. 
Words yawn on my tongue; 
they’ve lived there long enough. 
Arise, O rubble, 
Come out of me!

Perhaps I could breathe,

with a body freed from shrouds.

Can we tidy the house one last time 
before we’re displaced? 
Can we photograph it for memory— 
Store our laughter, our tears, and our screams— 
then leave? 
O sea stacked before us 
like a shy embrace 
in a world not ours, 
Can you send our echo to nearby oceans

so a giant whale strikes the occupier’s base? 
Can we invent a new alphabet 
for fear, for pain, for home, 
So the world hears 
That gray, continuous sound above us— 
Buzzing planes, 
Roaring rockets 
Above green, above ruin, 
Above a gravestone 
Scrawled in charcoal on a burnt house, 
The trace of a Firebolt?

A thousand times, the eyes sip from the sky 
while we search for warmth 
to gently carry us to sleep 
under our balcony,
a seamless sleep that tickles the stars.

I want… to sleep. 
I dreamed of some leader speaking— 
do you hear, mother? 
I see you laughing, feeding the birds. 
I see you playing on the swing of paradise, 
Iridescent colors glowing in a rainbow slumber, 
Like a bottle shaken—dreams all mixed inside. 
O mother, I swear I saw it: 
One shroud in Gaza holding 
the bodies of three martyrs.

I became a worn, wounded body 
groaning with pain. 
I want to hear the heartbeat of the sun— 
or the heart itself… that sponge 
which has grown hard. 
That’s how we walk—on feathers— 
until we reach the peak of exhaustion 
In full daylight and say:

We shall live here.

© Souad Zakaran

Souad Zakaran

Souad Zakaran is a Moroccan writer, poet, and translator. She graduated with a Bachelor's in French literature and English Linguistics. She worked as a foreign language teacher at a language institute in Casablanca. She currently works as a translator for a local newspaper and has poetry, narrative, and critical contributions in various regional and international literary newspapers and magazines. Her works are featured in several anthologies worldwide, including Poems for Rich, Centenary Project, Oldham Poetry, Well Read, Hooligan Street, and others. Her poem "Weiß" was shortlisted for the Ulrich GRASNICK Lyrikpreis 2025. Her poem “Sauberer Erde” earned third place in the Friedrich Schiller International Poetry Competition 2025.

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