By JK Miller
I used to go to the beach and run and play and fly a kite. As an afterthought, I would reach into the picnic basket for a piece of Mama’s taboon bread. That was when we had a house, and in the house, we had a kitchen and my mother— I loved being by her side—- stayed up the night before mixing the flours and kneading and placing the dough in the clay tabun oven with river rocks which gave the loaf its dimples. Mama would pinch my cheeks and say she must have had some river rocks in her womb. That was when I had a mother.
When we had a house in Khan Yunis, I had a father, and he would take me to Asda’a amusement park. We would ride the miniature train together. Now, the trees in the park have all been cut down. The wood is used to make shelters and prop up tents.
Now I live on the beach, and I dribble sand and make the shape of taboon bread.
I play marbles with the other boys. The beach is a good place for that. There are stretches without rubble, though once we found a hand reaching up out of the sand.
The rubble is good for hide and seek.
It’s not all play for me. I sweep the tent each morning. I repair the tent poles. I line up for water. That can take hours. Because of my size, I am shoved aside and lose my place. That makes me want to pick up a stone and throw it at the guy who pushes me, to pretend it is an F-16 missile, but every guy looks somewhat like my father, the eyes numb and the mouth flattened, so I drop it.
I make kites from scrap materials—plastic bags, woven rice sacks, pieces of wire from broken appliances, fishing line, that kind of thing—- but I don’t fly them anymore. I sell them for pocket change. Ten kites will buy an onion at the market. At least it did this morning. Maybe not tomorrow.
We sweep the dirt with our hands and collect lentils that have fallen from the aid packages. We wash them with the precious water, and when we boil them, the onion really helps to spice things up. That’s what Aunt Tala tells me. I do it for her, for the smile it brings briefly to her face. Like an ocean wave washing away the old trudging footprints and making a smooth place to dance.
JK Miller lives on the edge of cornfields. His poems have also been recently published, or will be, in shoegaze literary, Midsummer Dream House, Harrow House, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Academy of the Heart and Mind, Rat’s Ass Review, 50-Word Stories, Verse-Virtual, Paratextos, Amethyst Review, The Poetry Lighthouse, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Up North Lit. and Eunoia Review. In the summer of 2025, he completed a solo 1,335-mile bicycle ride from his house to his son’s house to see his newborn grandson.
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