this was a die-in.
healthcare workers, gathered in the middle of the city, bodies on the ground for gaza.
we were there not just as clinicians, not just as queers, not just as people trained to care—
but as witnesses to a system that pretends to be neutral while choosing a side.
we already knew that silence wasn’t an accident.
we’ve seen it before—in the wards, in the media, in the funding reports.
but still, there’s something about laying your body down on cold ground
that makes the grief feel sharper.
and makes the refusal feel real.
my keffiyeh wasn’t a symbol.
it was a practice.
a reminder.
a commitment to name genocide where others equivocate.
to be present when presence costs something.
the pink triangle on my chest traced a line back to act up,
to queer resistance in the face of state abandonment.
but this wasn’t about metaphor.
this was about gaza.
about children buried under rubble.
about medics killed in white coats.
about naming what we know,
and what our institutions refuse to say.
i didn’t speak.
i didn’t need to.
sometimes protest is not what you say
but what you don’t move to stop.
the sun was generous.
the grass didn’t mind.
but the quiet felt too practiced.
i spoke because not speaking
would have been a kind of surrender.
not to correct.
not to clarify.
but to stay present,
even when presence felt like exposure.
after the burnout.
after the heart palpitations.
after the kind of anxiety that makes your body forget itself—
i left.
a counter.
a cortado.
a book that doesn’t let you look away.
