Three Days of Isolation

They don’t just cut the internet,
they cut the thread
that keeps us connected to the world—
and to ourselves.

No news.
No messages.
No way to say “I am still alive.”
For three days,
we are erased
from life outside these walls.

The hours don’t pass—
they stretch.
Each minute drags like chains.
Three days
feel like three years
with no proof
the world is still turning.

I keep whispering to myself:
Is this how it ends?
Will light ever return?
Has the world forgotten us?
Is anyone still out there—waiting, listening?

The occupation forces don’t just fire missiles—
they fire silence,
cutting us off
from breath, from news, from life.
It traps us alone
with our fears and memories.

When the outside world vanishes,
the inside one collapses.
Memories pour in
like a flood—
people I lost,
words I never said,
the version of me
that once believed
this nightmare would pass.

In that void,
I am not afraid—
I am forgotten.
Cut off from the sky,
from the warmth of voices
that once remind me
I am not invisible.

And when the signal finally returns,
when a single message blinks back to life—
the world rushes in.
But part of me
remains trapped
in those long, dark hours,
when I became a question suspended in the void,
left unanswered.

And still I ask:
How long
can a soul survive
without being heard?

This Is Slow Death

I sit, back against the wall.
A mug warms my hand.
The air tightens.
A low hum sounds.
Far.
Fast.
The window shakes.
A shadow at the door.
I freeze—
eyes shut—
time holds its breath.
Family?
Friends?
Places breathing with me?
Laughter folded in notebooks.
Voices gone.
Life flickers behind closed eyes.
Seconds stretch.
The sound hits—
fists pounding.
Then—
it leaves.
Silence returns—
changed.
Eyes open.
The mug still warm.
The room is silent.
But something inside
has not survived.

No Rest Here

The faces I loved
don’t vanish.
They fall away
like dust blown off a dry branch,
leaving hollows behind.

A voice—
once low and near,
like someone breathing beside me—
now fades out
before it lands.

Laughter
stays close to sleep.

They drift
above the cracked window
the stars used to visit.
One breath too late—
their faces blur into air.

The world turns.
Shops stay open,
but shelves are bare.
Voices rise
over things that never bleed.
Screens blink,
but none of them speak my language.

Silence
groans when I breathe.
Not absence—
just no one left
to feel the weight.

Fear knocks.
Sometimes it steps in.
It never stays long.

There is fire.
I breathe it.

There is death.
It walks beside me.

I stay alive—
not for peace,
but because
rest
has no place here.
 
 

Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi

Taqwa Ahmed Al-Wawi is a Palestinian writer, poet, and editor from Gaza, and a nineteen-year-old English literature student at the Islamic University of Gaza. Through her writing, she amplifies Gaza’s voice and brings to light stories that are too often left untold. She is a writer for We Are Not Numbers (WANN) and has collaborated with, and had her work featured in, leading international platforms such asThe Electronic Intifada,Mondoweiss,The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs,The Palestine Chronicle,The Markaz Review,Middle East Monitor,Al Jazeera English,Middle East Eye,The Massachusetts Review, theInstitute for Palestine Studies,Prism,The New Arab,The Intercept,Truthout,Politics Today,The Nation, andArabLit Quarterly (magazine). Taqwa also serves as an editor forBaladi Magazine, where her poetry has been published, as well as in Opol, combining her passion for both writing and editing to elevate voices that need to be heard.