The Distance We Name

I downloaded an app that lets you name stars. Thought it’d be funny—tiny acts of colonization from my couch. I named one Nakba, another Teta and Sido’s old house in Haifa. There’s a bright one I called The UN Did Nothing, a faint flicker I labeled Peace Talks. I kept going, naming stars, until my screen glowed with a graveyard of them—names only I could see. Last night, I searched the sky for those names. I couldn’t find them. Just the dark, endless dark. That’s the thing about naming: doesn’t bring things closer. Only maps what was already lost.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Art Credit: Pierre Janineh