Insha'Allah

 

In the world of my childhood, they said, instead,
"Lord willing and the creek don't rise," with
wry smiles and a shrug that suggested
the water was already rising. It was inevitable.

My grandma pinned laundry on the line,
her eldest son just home from the war
with no visible wounds, but deafened,
and with a look in his eyes that said he had
seen things he would never want us to know,
so he would never tell.

I sang for him once and he got up and left the room,
moved, my grandma said, by my hopefulness
in a life where dreams were all the hope I had.

We are still hoping: that the war will end
before Ukraine is entirely rubble; that governments
will finally legislate gun control; that mass shootings
will end; that, globally, we will slow
the climate crisis enough to give us
time to change.

But hope is a fragile thing that wavers
in the light of all we know. Coastlines and riverbanks
are flooding; the poles are melting; whales
are swimming through a warming, toxic sea.

Yet "Insha'Allah," we chant, the war will end;
the world will continue on in a better way;
there will be a livable planet left for
our great-grandchildren. 

Insha'Allah.

Inspired by Insha'Allah by Danusha Lameris at Wild Writing