24/07/2025
The sea, whom I love.
The sea that heals. The sea that holds.
I’ve always found comfort there.
Salt means life.
It’s in our sweat when we work, in our tears when we break, in the oceans that connect us all.
It’s sacred. It’s human.
But now, when I think of salt, I think of Gaza.
And of the sea, just metres away, forbidden.
They can’t swim.
They can’t fish.
They can’t float.
The sea is there, vast and blue and ancient, but they are caged beside it, thirsting for the very thing that could soothe them.
I think of sweat.
The sweat of fathers lifting concrete with bare hands, hoping their children are still breathing underneath.
The sweat of rescue workers, neighbours, mothers, boys who should be in school, all of them digging.
All of them pouring themselves into rubble that keeps falling.
I think of tears.
Tears that no longer fall in silence.
Tears that scream, that rage, that stain.
The tears of mothers whose babies will never come home.
The tears of children who’ve forgotten what it feels like to sleep without fear.
In Gaza, salt doesn’t heal.
It stings.
It burns.
It crusts into wounds that never get the chance to close.
And yet, they go on. The people of Gaza.
With bodies made of salt, and hearts that still dare to hope.
They rebuild what is destroyed.
They plant where things have been burned.
They carry their dead, and then carry the living.
And we?
We must carry them too.
In our words, our voices, our silence broken.
Because salt remembers.
And so should we.
🕊️