Tonight I went to the fridge and I found cherries. Cherries grown in Hebron. They had been packed, forgotten deep in my fridge, and I; like a good American ignored them. Meanwhile they got darker, snd sweeter and more concentrated in all the micronutrients of life. Because when you are ignored by the world you hoard your exceptionalism. While your skin thickens to the onslaught of abject neglect, and maybe even the plucking of your loved ones young, unripe, too soon...you find a way to preserve the vital nutrients that make you who....

And here I come. Thanks to the colonialists commerce, I can taste your sweetness without ever having known your pain. Or the farmer who lovingly planted you, even then you were sold in someone else's name because crops don't rise up and assert the rights of their farmers plain.

It's been weeks now, months, generations, but they bleed on my tongue like an indigenous race. Some shriveled like raisins but they taste bright like the Jerusalem sun. Never forgotten, their pride of place.

But I bite one and it is bitter. How can I question why. After so many of its sisters were displaced, so many of it mother vines die. But underneath the bitterness is resilience. Bitter and sweet. The soul of the cherry, knows Its homeland. In spite of its anger, its supplantation, miles and miles away from its homeland, it knows no defeat. Sweet sweet sweet for the cherry, under occupation, is still a cherry complete.