A girl cups her baby brother’s face.
His lips are dry.
His eyes are wet.
“There’s food coming,” she whispers,
but her voice cracks on the lie.
Mama's bones are still warm in the rubble.
Because the truth is not edible.
A boy drags a blanket over his sister.
She hasn’t moved since the missile came.
He tells her to wake up,
he’s saved her the bigger half of an imaginary sandwich.
She doesn’t stir.
He eats both halves in silence.
Because the truth is not edible.
A toddler chews his mother’s hijab.
She used to wrap bread in it.
Now it smells like her last scream.
He gnaws the memory
until his gums bleed hope.
Because the truth is not edible.
A baby wails beside his dead father’s chest.
He nudges the body for milk,
but the body does not yield.
The flies do.
He swats at them with hands too small
to hold grief.
Because the truth is not edible.
A mother dies with her hand in boiling water.
She was trying to soften cardboard
to trick her child’s hunger.
The child eats it anyway.
Calls it cake.
Claps through tears.
Because the truth is not edible.
Children gather under the remains of a roof.
They peel the wallpaper, lick the glue.
Pretend it tastes like honey.
One says, “Close your eyes, it’s a feast.”
Another replies, “But I can still feel my ribs.”
Because the truth is not edible.
They do not know cartoons.
They know crows.
They know the sound of a fridge
that never hums.
They know that silence
means someone else just starved.
Because the truth is not edible.
And still, the world posts peace.
Dines on denial.
Scrolls past corpses.
Counts calories,
while Gaza’s children count days
since their last bite.
They are not dying quietly.
They are dying full of sound
the sound of empty bowls,
of mothers breaking,
of babies begging the dead
to get up
and bring bread.
But the dead do not bake.
And the truth?
the truth is not edible.