[post] They count the rockets, not the silence afterward when a mother...

They count the rockets, not the silence afterward when a mother digs with her hands. They count the soldiers, not the boy who stops speaking for three days after the power goes off. The cameras show the smoke, but not the old woman who still sets a plate at dinner for the grandson who vanished in ’21. In Ramallah, a classroom has seventeen desks but only twelve names on the wall—some left, some gone. I know this because my sister’s neighbor teaches there. The dead don’t get buried in the news, just mentioned—like they were never small once, sucking their thumb under a fig tree.