The Throne of Grief

(Full Elegy)

I. Comedy Without Laughter

Grief is a tricky thing—
a slapstick comedy without the laugh track.
You trip on memory,
skid across unfinished sentences,
and land face-first in the quiet.

No audience.
No gasp.
No cut to commercial.

Just the sound of your own breath
trying not to break.

The stage is your kitchen,
where a dropped spoon becomes
a grenade of sound.
The lighting cue?
Flickering fridge bulb
and the low hum of a world that forgot to care.

You slip on grief like it's a joke,
but the floor never forgives you.
The banana peel was the scent of their shirt
still clinging to the coat hook.
The punchline—
a voicemail you refuse to delete,
where they said, “Call me back when you can.”
And you can’t.
You haven’t.
You won’t.

And still,
you rehearse the fall
as if it might land differently—
as if this time,
someone might catch you,
or the silence might laugh,
or the ground might not feel
so much like goodbye.

“Gaza’s children are being killed at an unprecedented rate: Save the Children” — October 2023

---

II. Rewind (Romcom Redacted)

Grief is a dodgy thing—
like a romcom
without the comedy
or the romance
or the meet-cute at the bookstore
when fingers brush over the same dog-eared novel
and time hiccups.

No first glances across train cars,
no awkward silences blooming into laughter,
no rainstorm kisses on cobblestone.

Only flat skies.
Only the sound of traffic.
Only silence pressing against windows
like it wants in.

Saftar.

There’s no soundtrack,
just the tinny echo of their favorite song
looping from a half-dead speaker,
like the universe forgot to skip to the next scene.

The coffee shop still opens at eight.
Their name is still misspelled on old receipts.
And their seat—
always the corner by the window—
remains untouched.
You pretend not to look.
You always look.

It’s just one set of footsteps in the sand,
fading like a name no one calls anymore.
The table for two is always set—
but never cleared.
No waitstaff hurries you along.
Grief has all the time in the world.

The movie plays on repeat,
each scene frayed at the edges.
You whisper their lines under your breath,
as if memorizing them
could conjure a new ending.

But no one stays for the credits.
And you sit in the dark,
again.

"Entire Palestinian Families Wiped Out in Israeli Bombardment of Gaza" — Al Jazeera, Oct 2023

---

III. 600 Days

Six hundred days.
Of pretending the world didn’t stop.
Of brushing your teeth in a mirror
that no longer shows your whole face.
Of pouring coffee into a chipped mug
with hands that remember trembling
from the first time the call never came.

Gaza—

the word you try not to whisper
into the steam.

Six hundred days.
Of calendars that mean nothing.
The dentist still sends reminders.
The gas bill still arrives.
You forget to pay it.
You forget to care.

"Gaza faces starvation and collapse as aid blocked, infrastructure destroyed" — Middle East Eye, March 2024

Of unlocking your phone
to read the last text again.
And again.
And again.
As if muscle memory
might summon a miracle.
As if the screen might finally say:
“I made it out.”

Gaza—

between the letters.
In the pixel flicker.
In the ghost thumb that once replied.

Six hundred days.
Like a drumbeat
under skin.
Not music—
warning.

Like a clock
that only counts the ache.
Not forward.
Not back.
Just deeper.

Six hundred days.
Of holding grief
like a child that won’t sleep.
Of hearing nothing
but the echo of names
no one dares to speak aloud.

And still—
you rise.
You rise,
as if the world deserves
the bones you break
just to walk through it.

"Death Toll in Gaza Surpasses 128,000: UN Officials Say True Number May Be Higher" — Genospectra, March 2025

---

IV. The Sound of Fire

Can you still hear them?
The screams that live
beneath the quiet—
not past it,
beneath it,
like something buried alive
that still claws at the earth.

The ones no siren could drown,
no statement could sanitize,
no headline could carry
without dropping.

You hear them
in the pause between words,
in the cough of the kettle,
in the silence that shouldn’t have a shape—
but does.

Can you feel it—
the fire,
still raging beneath your ribs,
a heat that doesn’t warm,
only smolders?

"Dozens Killed in Israeli Strike on Rafah Camp; Survivors Say Tents Turned to Fire Traps" — Al Jazeera, May 2025

A secret blaze
fed by photographs
you don’t look at
but refuse to throw away.
By shirts you haven’t washed.
By letters you won’t reread
but also won’t let yellow.

The weight of their name
is an ember tucked under your tongue—
you carry it like a prayer
you’re too angry to speak.

It doesn’t burn the house down.
It never has that mercy.
It just flickers,
forever—
behind your eyes
when they ask how you’re doing.
In your palms
when you try to fall asleep.

It is your warmth now.
And your wound.
And your witness.

"Mass Grave Found at Nasser Hospital: Over 300 Palestinians Discovered, Some Bound and Executed" — Associated Press, April 2024

---

V. Inheritance

Here—
take it.

Your crown of grief:
not gold, but fabric—
faded T-shirts folded like relics
in the bottom drawer you never open,
still carrying the shape of their shoulders.

The grocery lists—
half-crumpled, ink bleeding,
“cinnamon, oat milk, call Mom”—
scribbled in a handwriting
you’d recognize in your dreams.

Threaded with strands of their hair
still caught in the pillowcase,
as if the body forgets
to let go
even after the soul has gone.

Heavy as memory,
bright as regret,
a circlet pressed to your skull
by every word you wish you'd said
before silence took the room.

And now,
your lion’s throne:
not carved marble,
but the old chair
at the edge of the bed
where no one sleeps.

Where you sit to put on socks,
to read bills you can’t make sense of,
to stare at the floor
as if it will say their name back to you.

Sturdy.
Empty.
Majestic in its absence.

This is your coronation.
Not with trumpets,
but with dust motes in a sunbeam
and the echo of their laugh
that still lives in the walls.

You didn’t ask for this kingdom.
But here you are—
ruling it
with a cracked voice,
a bowed spine,
and a mouth full of
“I’m fine.”

Because what else is there to say
when language
left with them?

"Palestinian Children Suffer Amputations After Israeli Airstrikes: ‘We Found Them in Pieces’" — The New Arab, Feb 2024

---

VI. Coronation

And so it goes:
the coronation of silence,
of salt and dust,
of rooms that echo with absence
louder than any symphony.

You are crowned not with gold,
but with the ache that settles
in the base of your spine
each morning you do not want to rise.

You wear the robe of mourning—
not black,
but every color that lost its name:
the ochre of unopened letters,
the blue of light through their curtains,
the red of a teacup chipped on the day they left
and you never fixed it.

You walk the halls of the day
like a monarch with no map,
trailing rituals behind you—
feeding the cat,
folding laundry,
replying “I’m okay”
to those who no longer ask.

"Gaza cemeteries overflow as families bury loved ones in parks and roadsides" — Al Jazeera, Jan 2024

You press grief into shape
just long enough
to carry it through a supermarket aisle,
past children who cry for candy,
past radios that never mention
the names you still whisper
into the faucet’s hiss.

But still,
you walk.

Still,
you sit upon the throne,
a quiet sovereign
of ash and ash and ash,
burning.

"UN: Gaza Has Become 'Uninhabitable'—A Graveyard for Children and International Law" — Reuters, May 2025

The crown fits only because
your head no longer flinches
under its weight.

There is no court.
No herald.
Just the wind
carrying the sound of prayers
that sound like pleading.

And you,
reigning over what remains—
bone, memory,
and the impossible promise
that someday,
this fire
will be seen
for what it is.

---

VII. They Say… (nothing)

They say time heals.
But they said nothing
when time fractured into body counts,
into sniper shots lodged in six-year-old hearts,
into mass graves dug by surviving cousins
with hands too small to hold a shovel.
When the sky fell in phosphorous flames
and the only rising was smoke.

They say move on—
but where does one walk
when every path is paved with names?

They say silence is sacred.
But silence is a weapon, too—
a sheath for the blade of denial,
a shroud pulled tight over the mouths of the dead,
a veil draped across the eyes of the living
so they can say they didn’t see.

So we answer with mourning,
with fists around memory,
with prayer in the shape of screams.

Ibāda jamāʿiyya.
Ibāda jamāʿiyya.
Ibāda jamāʿiyya.

This is collective grief—
not mine to name,
not mine to lead,
but mine to carry,
with them.
For them.
Behind them.

Ibāda jamāʿiyya—
not empathy without edge,
not pity,
not saviorhood.

But presence.
Witness.
The sacred task
of refusing to look away.

Grief as resistance.
Grief as refusal to let them vanish.
Grief as breath,
as battleground,
as binding.

So let them wail,
and I will wail with them.
Let them bury their children,
and I will hold the shovel
with trembling hands
and righteous fury.

I will not steal their mourning—
but I will build altars from the rubble
they should never have had to clear.

Ibāda jamāʿiyya.
Let the world turn away.
We will not.

This grief is theirs.
But I will carry it
with them.

Until justice
is no longer
a metaphor.

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Story Ember leGaïe | May 29, 2025