First Week of the War

Ignorance fills the souls of my school,

happiness explodes in the hallways,

but all I think about is my home,

Israel, the place I truly come from,

where even after so many years

enemies still hunt us on our land.

Hamas isn’t after walls but people.

They are here to murder our women,

our children, even our dogs.

So what’s next? Hatikvah on the ramparts,

our hope will carry us through hardships.

Yet another war… We shall prevail.

Tatiana Rebecca Shrayer, a sophomore at the Brookline High School in Massachusetts, is the author of the collection “Searching for Bow and Arrows.”