In the first week of April the weather turned suddenly unseasonably, insistently lovely. The sky was blue, the air warm and windless, and the sun beamed on the muddy ground with all the sweet impatience of June.
fatima aamer bilal, excerpt from i mother it, the absence of her ii. i was hard to bear from the very start.
[text id: april regrets me like a parent does a child. i stand for everything it does not. i have maimed it with sadness. april did give birth to me under a fruity tree, but i was born with chainsaw hands.]
A book that doesn’t mention my language or my country, and has maps of every place except for my birthplace, as if I were an illegitimate child on Mother Earth.
Borders are those invented lines drawn with ash on maps and sewn into the ground by bullets.
— Mosab Abu Toha, from "Palestine A–Z," Things You May Find Hidden in My Ear