the rage i rage

“Lifesaving,” it said.

“Everything,” it said.

And a father cradled his son’s severed head.
Habibi.

حبيبي

Score.

the screen sells death between advertisements and praise
my hands shake blue with the rage i rage

That is the complete document. That is the whole archive. That is the sentence that contains all the other sentences, the one you have to keep returning to because it will not resolve, because it is not the kind of thing that resolves, because resolution is a luxury that belongs to people who get to change the channel.

i watched a hockey game commercial splice itself into my feed,

a sudden, manufactured burst of speed,

while a palestinian father held the shattered skull of his son and whispered love.

What curdles beneath the screen?
Machine.

What paints slaughter clean?
Machine.

What sells death between routines?
Machine.

A hockey game.
A sponsor’s grin.
Flags spinning bright on polished skin.
An anthem wrapped in marketing.

They spent money on this. That is the part I want you to sit with. Someone sat in a room, a bright room probably, a room with good coffee and a whiteboard and a budget, and they decided on the word “lifesaving.”

somewhere in a studio someone choreographed violence into sport,

a tailored clip, aggressive and short,

and i felt the rage rise like a thing with rubble teeth.

They decided on the word “everything.” They chose the font. They chose the music. They chose the moment, halftime, intermission, the pause between one kind of violence and another, and they placed it there deliberately, in front of a crowd that was already full of beer and loyalty and the specific amnesia that nationalism requires.

a hockey game commercial all flags and shining teeth
clean laughter stitched over the machinery beneath
meanwhile a father in gaza kneels inside a grave of haze
my hands shake blue with the rage i rage

“Lifesaving,” it said.

Meanwhile a father gathers what the regime left of his son
piece by trembling piece
calling him habibi
calling him beautiful
calling him back from the red ruin
though he knows
he knows

the boy on screen smiled with all his teeth,

but the father’s boy will never smile again, will never breathe.

And a father was on his knees in the rubble of what used to be a home, which used to be a neighborhood, which used to be a city that had a name before they started using the past tense for it, and he was holding his son. What remained of his son. The part of his son that still had a face.

he holds the head of his son like cradling broken light
like if he loosens his fingers the world ends twice tonight
i love you my beautiful boy rest now habibi he says
my hands shake blue with the rage i rage

And he was saying the only words. The words you say when language has been reduced to its absolute core, when everything grammatical has been blown away and what is left is just the root, just the marrow, just the name you gave the person you loved most when they were so new they still smelled like before.

Habibi.

حبيبي

My love. My heart. My life. My reason. The word that in Arabic holds more than English has room for, the word that means I would have died instead, the word that means you were the proof that the world was worth being in, the word that means I am saying your name because I cannot stop, because stopping means something I am not able to mean yet.

i rage at the simultaneity of it all,

the way the world refuses to stall,

refuses to stop for five minutes to witness the fall.

Habibi.

حبيبي

the algorithm feeds me empire then feeds me ash
a sponsorship a soda a bomb blast in a flash
their timelines bloom with corpses between celebrity praise
my hands shake blue with the rage i rage

What feasts while children disappear?
Normalcy.

What trains the public not to hear?
Normalcy.

What turns genocide into another sponsored year?
Normalcy.

The commentators keep their cadence.
The ads keep humming soft and blue.
Somewhere executives discuss engagement metrics
while a man in Gaza kisses the forehead
that no longer answers him.

“I love you my beautiful boy, rest now habibi.”

Habibi.
حبيبي
Rest now.

As if sleep
had anything to do with this.

What claws against my ribs tonight?
Fight.

What burns so hot it blurs my sight?
Fight.

What refuses all their neat polite?
Fight.

Because rage is sometimes the last clean thing
left in a world teaching itself
how not to feel.

what kind of world cuts to commercial after slaughter
what kind of world makes martyrdom of every son and daughter
what kind of god watches this and still delays
my hands shake blue with the rage i rage

Score.

the commercial ended and the next post was a man destroyed,

scrolling through the algorithmic void,

his hands shaking, his voice breaking,

beautiful boy beautiful beautiful boy rest now habibi.

The crowd rose. The building filled with sound.

and the hockey players kept skating,

the metrics kept calculating,

the crowd kept roaring while the world kept ignoring,

the profit margins staying vertical, the apathy creating.

The screen filled with desert and camels and clean cinematic longing and the word “everything” in a font chosen by someone in a bright room who has never held that weight, who will never hold that weight, who went home after the meeting and made dinner and did not think about it again.

his voice was not a voice it was a body torn apart
it crawled through wires and buried itself inside my heart
and still the commentators smile beneath arena haze
my hands shake blue with the rage i rage

i rage at the people who made that commercial and built the machine,

who knew exactly how to curate the screen,

who knew the image would circulate alongside amputated limbs unseen.

i rage at the people who watched and felt nothing but the thrill,

the perfectly timed music, the slow motion, the violence dressed to kill.

beautiful boy rest now beautiful boy rest now

this is what they are selling us,

the quiet, the crush, what they want us to trust.

The rage I rage is not the kind that announces itself. It is not the kind they have prepared a response for. It is not hot. It is not loud.

the father’s voice is the realest thing i have heard all day,

more real than the manufactured drama of the play,

more real than the script written to make us consume and cast away.

i rage at the forgetting,

the constant resetting,

the mechanics of erasure that happen before we even remember the debt.

It is not the rage they can point to and say: irrational, dangerous, too much, why do they always make it so difficult to have a conversation.

on the ice they celebrated with their arms in the air,

in gaza a father lowered his son into the earth, a hollow despair,

beautiful boy beautiful boy beautiful boy.

the commercial will play again tomorrow, unbothered and bright,

the father will still be holding his son in the night,

the world will call this balance, a trick of the light,

the world will call this a regrettable cost of the fight.

i rage at the word regrettable,

i rage at the distance between a hockey game and a grave they make forgettable.

beautiful boy rest now the father said,

and somewhere else someone was laughing at a play perfectly led,

someone was selling us the idea that this is normal,

that grief is just an archive, distant and formal,

that we can hold both things at once in our head.

we can,

but not without the rage in the span,

not without the knowledge that every moment of normalcy is a knife,

every moment of spectacle is a systemic desecration of life.

It is the rage of knowing. Of having looked directly at it and not looked away. Of understanding that the word “lifesaving” and the father on his knees exist in the same moment, on the same earth, under the same sky, and that one of them aired during a hockey game and one of them did not.

tonight somewhere a father rocks what genocide has left behind
tonight somewhere the world keeps scrolling deaf and blind
and i sit here choking on these fluorescent days
my hands shake blue with the rage i rage

the rage i rage

It is the rage of having to say so.

Of having said so.

Of saying it again.

“Lifesaving,” it said.

And a father cradled his son’s severed head and whispered the only word left in the world.

beautiful boy rest now beautiful boy rest now

يا ولدي الحلو ارتاح هلق يا ولدي الحلو ارتاح هلق

Habibi.

حبيبي

Score.