By Chetan Bhatnagar
My experience of the rubble is a lie.
It is fabricated. I do not know how the textures of stone, soil, and cement feel anywhere except my feet.
Are the languid clothes crushing my chair a rubble?
No, this not a rubble; the chair is unharmed.
I take off my socks and try to imagine the cold, hard floor on my head. This is what a rubble would feel like, I choose to believe, but
heavier.
I imagine my ears flattened between two rocks, but this is inaccurate.
My ears rest like vestigial feathers on a pillow. I have never even “felt” my ears until they are in pain.
Do people trapped beneath the rubble suddenly notice their ears?
The cold travels up my shins — but it cannot proceed past them.
A colder floor would send the chill up my knees, but my bones have subsumed the rubble.
I stretch my neck; my head is secure and can turn freely.
Both me and my head will never experience rubble.
Are the books that I keep issuing a rubble?
They weigh me down, but this is not a rubble.
The weight of these dead authors is out of order.
In the true rubbles that form every minute, living authors get crushed first.
This is what I know of the rubble — it takes the children that hear the tales of the living authors.
It takes the parents that tell the tales.
The 5-year-old eats his lunch with fuss, dropping some food on the ground.
The ground tastes it, and soon both parent and child are digested by the rubble.
This is what I know of the rubble — cement and stone show solidarity with their kind.
People fight against the empires that create rubbles and they get arrested.
They feel the concrete of the detention centers push against their tired backs. But this is not rubble, but the rubble’s friend.
This is what I know of the rubble — that it crushes my speech.
My mom calls across continents, and across time.
I do not tell her I was out protesting the rubble. English is not our first language, and when she asks me why I was there, what do I say?
I will say “they are turning Palestine to rubble.” She will ask me “what does rubble mean?” and I will become quiet.
I do not know mom. I will say, swallowing stones. I have never known.