Can You Even Imagine?
FIRST PUBLISHED 3RD June 2025
I didn’t mean to cry today
not in the cereal aisle.
Not because of war.
But I thought about my boy,
his Spiderman pyjamas,
the way he skips when he runs.
And I remembered
he’d be the one
most likely to die
if we lived there.
Can you even imagine?
In Gaza, more than 14,000 children are dead.
Some were shot.
Some were crushed.
Some burned alive.
Some simply disappeared
no limbs left to identify.
Can you even imagine?
They say
it’s the 5 to 9-year-olds
who die the most.
In their hundreds.
Too big to carry when the missiles fall.
Not fast enough to run alone.
Like mine.
One mother ran with her toddler
and left her son behind,
willing his little legs to go faster,
screaming at him to run,
watching the blast take him anyway.
How do you choose which child to save?
How do you outrun an airstrike
with one in each arm?
Can you even imagine?
We have schools.
They have rubble.
We have fire drills.
They have fire.
We debate screen time.
They have no screens, no light,
no parents left to ask.
Can you even imagine?
And among the living,
17,000 children
are unaccompanied.
Not dead.
Just utterly,
violently
alone.
Some maimed.
Some wounded.
The ones who survived.
Can you even imagine
being all alone in the world
at just four years old?
And still, I hear:
“But October 7th.”
Yes.
That day was pure horror.
Innocent lives taken.
Children.
And still,
this?
This is not justice.
This is not defence.
This is starvation used as strategy.
This is whole neighbourhoods
erased in a blink.
This is white phosphorus
melting through bone
while the world looks away.
This is genocide.
Can you even imagine?
Tell me why it’s not all over the news.
Why this isn’t the headline.
Tell me why my feed is full
of influencers selling skincare
and not the melted faces
of dead babies.
Tell me why
some bodies
are easier to scroll past.
Why saying
children have rights
or
don’t bomb babies
is considered
“too political.”
Can you even imagine?
A girl called Yaqeen
made videos from Gaza
about kindness.
She was eleven,
the same age as my daughter.
She was killed in an airstrike
that flattened her home.
Can you even imagine?
A doctor saved newborns by day
and lost nine of her own children
in one night.
Nine bedrooms turned to silence.
Nine empty chairs.
She still works.
Can you even imagine
going back to work
after losing nine children?
If this were the UK,
if Manchester was flattened
and Birmingham starved,
if the mums in your WhatsApp group
each had to bury a child
with no funeral,
would we still say,
“It’s complicated”?
Would we still call for “balance”
and “both sides”?
Can you even imagine?
I come home.
Unpack the groceries.
Watch my children
eat toast,
argue over the iPad,
settle into their beds.
And I know:
I won a brutal lottery.
Just by being born here,
not there.
Can you even imagine?
I just want to help them all.
Poems don’t bring back the murdered.
But what else
can I do?
A genocide being live streamed,
and no one seems to notice.
I will not
stay silent,
even if the rest of the world
seems to be.
Please consider sharing this poem.
If it made you uncomfortable, sit with that.
Can you use your voice while others are being silenced?
This is happening now. We cannot look away.
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© 2025 With Shaking Hands. All rights reserved. This poem and recording are original works protected by copyright. Do not copy or reproduce without permission.
