I never knew death until I saw the bombing of a refugee camp. Craters filled with disfigured elbows and spider torsos, but no sign of a face. The only impression of fading scream. I never understood pain until a seven-year-old girl clutched my hand. Stared up with me with soft-brown eyes waiting for answers. And I didn't have any. I had dried pens in my back pocket that couldn't fill pages of understanding a resolution. And a rather handshake held the key to our grandmother's house. But I couldn't unlock the cell that caged shoulder brothers. They said we sing shout dreams so the other side will feel our father's presence. A craftsman. Bill Holmes and Arias were no one was building. And when he fell, he was silent. A 50-calibre bullet tore through his neck treading his vocal cords. Too close to the wall. His hammer must have been a weapon. He must have been a weapon encroaching on settlement hills and demographics. So his daughter studies mathematics. Seven explosions, signs eight bodies equals four congressional resolutions. Seven Apache helicopters, signs eight Palestinian villages equals silence in a second knock-buck. Our birth rate minus third birth rate equals one C and four hundred villages re-erected. One state plus two peoples and she can't stop crying. Never knew revolution or the proper equation. There's the pages with her fingertips searching for answers but only has teachers. Looks to the sky and she stars at David demolishing squalor with help by her missiles. She thinks backwards and memories of his last hug before he turned and fell. Now she pumps dirty water from wells while settlements divide and conquer. And her father's killer sits beachfront with European vernacular. She thinks backwards while they think backwards of obscene notions and indigenous confusion. This is our land she said. She's seven years old. This is our land she said. And she doesn't need history books or schoolroom teacher. She is these walls. This sky. Her refugee camp. She doesn't know the proper equation. But she sees my drive pens no longer waiting for my answers. Just holding her grandmother's key. Searching for ink.