Sometimes There is a Day
Sometimes there is a day you just want
to get so far away from.
Feel it shrink inside you like an island,
as if you were on a boat.
Then, maybe no more fighting
about land. I want that day to feel
as if it never happened, when Ahmad was burned,
when people were killed, when my cousin was shot.
The day someone went to jail
is not a day that shines.
I want to have a clear mind again, as a baby who stares at the light
wisping through the window and thinks,
That’s mine.
By Palestinian-American poet Naomi Shihab
From The Tiny Journalist a book of poems