My lover laments the collective forgetting
of wars and genocides around the world.
No one is talking about Ukraine anymore.
The public has moved on from Gaza.

I tell him, there are even more
atrocities that are so underreported,
they didn’t even get a chance
to be remembered.

In November, a Congolese man
set himself on fire to get people to look.
One child in Sudan dies of hunger
every two hours. Who is even counting?

It’s been 1589 days since I called
my ex-lover because my mother
was having a heart attack.
I knew I should've been a doctor.

Life goes on even if your
heart stops, even if your heart
of hearts stops. Look, I am still
an orphan, 1589 days later.