The Weight of Clean Plates

The washing-up piles up like bodies

and I can't stop watching the screen.

Greta's frog hat bright green

against the grey warship hull

as they zip-tie her wrists

for carrying baby milk

across water that belongs to no one

and everyone.

 

My hands shake in the sink water

not from the cold but from the rage

that has nowhere to go

except into scrubbing last night's plates

whilst four hundred hearts

disappear into Israeli holds

and their mothers scream

into phones that won't connect.

 

This is what hope looks like:

fifty boats cutting through Mediterranean swells

loaded with nappies and formula

and the kind of love

that sails towards machine guns

because children are starving

and someone has to try.

 

This is what evil looks like:

water cannons blasting volunteers

who came from Spain and Italy and Greece

with their own money, their own time, their own bodies

to say no

to the slow murder of Gaza.

 

I voted for these bastards

who sell weapons to killers,

who call genocide self-defence,

who let children die

rather than upset the Americans.

I scrub harder

like I can wash the blood

off my ballot paper.

 

The last captain got so close

he could see the smoke

rising from what used to be schools,

could hear the silence where laughter should be

before they dragged him

from his wheelhouse.

 

A grandmother whispers:

"They came for us too, child,

loaded us into cattle trucks,

stamped our papers 'undesirable'

and the good people watched

from their kitchen windows."

 

But these beautiful fools did something.

Sailed into the teeth of empire

with medicine and milk powder

and the kind of stubborn love

that refuses to let children starve

quietly.

 

The water in my sink turns cold

and I'm crying now,

not pretty tears

but the ugly sobbing

of someone who knows

that goodness exists

and evil wins anyway.

 

Greta's hat floating

in my reflection

in the dirty water.

This is how it ends:

not with bombs

but with bureaucracy,

not with war

but with paperwork

that makes love illegal

and murder lawful.

 

The plates are clean now,

stacked like broken promises.

I turn off the tap

and the silence fills

with the sound

of my own breathing

whilst theirs stops

in detention centres

we'll never see.

 

Tomorrow I'll wash more dishes

and watch more screens

and rage at a democracy

that doesn't listen

to its people

who voted for peace

and got genocide instead.

 

But tonight

I hold their courage

in my wet hands,

those magnificent hearts

who sailed towards death

because love demanded it,

who carried hope

across hostile waters

and showed us

what it looks like

to refuse

to let the world

break our hearts

into silence.