The Skaters

Hair flying, a boy on a wheeled board,

arms flung open as if to gather sky.

“Hey Adam!” she called. “What’s that you’re on?”

“Faster than a hammama in flight,” he laughed,

“swifter than the flogging machineIn the hollowed shell of a city,

where the minarets crumple like burnt matchsticks

and walls wear the soot of yesterday’s fire,

young girls, light-footed, skirt the rubble—

taking turns on splintered boards

as if the world were not still groaning.

Laila hadn’t asked for bread that morning.

Um lay wordless, a rain of grief

soaking her pillow.

They’d dragged Uncle Ishaak from the schoolhouse,

his chalk fingers still curled mid-equation.

So Laila left soft as breath,

stepping between sleeping stray dogs,

torn plastic bags wind-lifted like spirits.

Behind what once was the post office,

a low thunder stirred—

not bombs, but Adam.

Down the broken road he came,

 in the sky.”

He skidded to a stop, dust blooming at his heel.

And something in her stomach—the knot of hunger,

the grief of silence—gave way

to something lighter.

She stepped on, teetered,

then steadied, one foot pushing,

then another. The world blurred.

Past the cratered shops, the flattened bakery,

until the big slab from yesterday’s airstrike

loomed like a dare.

Heart pounding, she crouched, sprang—

an awkward Ollie,

and the board, for one impossible breath,

lifted her clean across.

She landed, a soft clack,

rolled to a breathless stop.

Adam was running, grinning,

his hand on her arm like a brother’s anchor.

Neither spoke.

But both knew

—if only for that moment—

that the ruins could still ring with wonder.

That the sky,

despite everything,

still had room for lift.

“And once in a lifetime,

the longed-for tidal wave

of justice can rise up,

and hope and history rhyme.”

Inspired by Seamus Heaney, co-created with ChatGPT