Hāwane Rios Instagram – “Every single one of those children was somebody’s everything.” – @omayazein There is fatigue in my chest when i say the words ceasefire. I think I may have said that word now more than I have ever said my own name. The way that it echos off of walls of empty rooms. I feel as if the cold in my chest isn’t fatigue after all. It is the empty room, where the only entity that sits amidst the shadows, is the empress of grief herself veiled in black lace. Streams for tears looking for a sea they cannot reach. Vocal cords worn out like lamenting instruments that haven’t left their cases in decades. The loneliness that comes with standing alone in the cathedrals of your own pain with only your memories to talk to. And it is those of love that visit the most. The prayer that is mother’s love for the child they created. That which is the most holy. The gift of life and the eternal love that comes with it. That is the promise in the promised land. Life. You cannot build a holy land on the mass graves of children. The grief of all mothers will never allow it. There will never be peace for an evil nation. There is no other more enduring love in the world. In the universe. There is no other more enduring protection in the world. In the universe. Than that of a mother’s love and a mother’s prayers over their children in life and in the cosmos of the ancestral realms. Remember always that Palestinian mothers love their children just as we love ours. Know this. Feel this. Live this. Ha‘uha‘u ‘uē