I am beginning to have fewer dreams. Or nightmares; I am unsure what the most accurate description is. I no longer have a normal sleep pattern—most nights, I am scrolling or stationed in front of satellite news reports, watching a tomorrow that has yet to begin where I live unfold its horrors on our people. I have kept this meager vigil for seven months, trying to absorb every fact and detail of the genocide in Gaza. Poet Fady Joudah writes of our dead, “I am a grief capitalist, I claim them all.” While grief animates my vigil, so does distrust. I know not to trust the record-keeping. I watch our deaths disputed, I watch the months, years, crimes, and devastations of seventy-six years that predate October 7th, 2023, erased before my eyes.
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