Day 1,027

with thanks to Dr Dorotea Gucciardo

No more than two years old.
Possibly — given
the levels of starvation —
two-and-a-half. She’s walking
alone on the ruined road, shoulders
hunched, back stooped, carrying
a heavy jug of water. Her
little arms bent backward
over her head
to secure it. We
don’t know who
may have sent her:
a mother who just
gave birth to her sibling?
A father whose legs
were blown off in a bombing?
We don’t know
how many times
she has walked this same road
to get water for her family;
she’s been fixed in the sniper’s
eye, the quadcopter’s
vicious aim. We don’t know
what the weight of the jug,
carried day after day,
will do to her spine, or
how many more times
she’ll survive this errand.

Day 1,026

Their bodies charred. Unable
to be identified, except
for the sizes of the children.
Length of a six-year-old.
Length of a nine-year-old,
an eleven-year-old.
Charred like trees,
like a grove of trees
that yesterday was
green and leafy. A family
asleep, now dead;
who, in the evening,
had been alive. Children
playing. Unrecognizable now
except for how long
the shrouds are, shrouds
wound around ash. Their
laughter: ash. Their
love for each other:
ash. Their studying:
ash. Their tenderness, their
fear, their singing, their arguments,
their desires, their
teasing, their dreaming: ash.

Day 1,025

Wait for me
were the last words
you heard your sister
speak. Wait for me
as she ran from the tent
down the sandy road
to where there was water.
She was going to fill
the buckets. You
and your brother
were going to walk
to the edge of the sea
with the younger ones.
She wanted to go.
Wait for me! she called
back to you, turning
her head. Her hair
windblown. Her feet
bare — her shoes
had too many holes
to be useful. She
was going to get water
so you’d have something
to cook with later.
Something to wash
the little ones’ feet with
after the beach. (The three
of you older ones —
your brother
only ten —
taking care of the littles
since your parents
were killed.) You waited.
Waited. The children
were crying. When?
Why can’t we go?
Your brother
began walking down
that same sandy road,
when suddenly
a neighbor from the tent camp
appeared. You called
to your brother,
who came running back.
It was good he was there
beside you when the neighbor
gave you the news.

Day 1,024

Their bodies were found together,
the two sisters whose laughter
the family in the next tent
had been hearing the night before.
Their bodies, stiff and cold
and covered with blood; when,
only the night before,
they’d been dancing
to music from their brother’s phone
and calling for others to join them.
How is it possible they’re dead?
Their voices, their wild joy
despite everything — they’d been
so alive! Now they are being wrapped
in white shrouds. Now the earth
is being prepared to receive them.
Now their mother will live
the rest of her life
hearing the shots that killed them.

Day 1,023

You stand, looking out
over the rubble
your city has been reduced to,
wondering how many
lie under that fallen world:
walls, ceilings, furniture,
rooftops, cars — all
indistinguishable
from where you stand.
How many bodies,
whole or in fragments?
How many severed limbs?
Charred faces? No way
to number them. No equipment
to clear what’s stacked
on top of them. Friends
you grew up with, still
unaccounted for. Your
grandmother, her cherished
blue shoes. Your mother,
her hair that could never
be tamed. What parts
of yourself as well
lie trapped there? you ask
the wind that seems
to carry their grieving
voices. The wind
that blows over everything.

Day 1,022

Girl, what more
can they take away from you?
You’re fourteen. Your
parents gone. Sisters
gone. Your leg
gone. All the running you loved,
all the dancing:
gone. You sit in the tent
with your aunt, watch her
boil water for rice and lentils.
Watch your small cousins
play with a ball.
You pick up a pencil,
a torn piece of paper; you
begin sketching them.
You draw; erase;
render their movement
better this time than the last.
Outside the tent, a shaft of sunlight
illumines the fetid ground;
makes it seem, for a moment,
golden. Welcoming. There is still
beauty, you tell yourself. Still
reason to keep on going.

Day 1,021

Ayhem

The boy, 13, went to the market
to buy what he could
for his family. When
he returned, his whole
family — parents, siblings —
had been killed.
Instead of being received
with happy smiles for the
peaches, the zucchini,
he was met by shrouds:
some of them small.
His youngest sister?
Which was his mother?
Which was his father?
Confused, in shock, the boy
looked around. People
had gathered. Were standing
around him, behind him,
their hands on his head,
his back, his shoulders.
Who will eat these fruits
and vegetables now? he
was thinking, and
how is it
that I’m the only one alive?

Day 1,020

This is a record
of how they were killed:
He was standing on the roof of his house.
(His house was still standing.)
She was bringing a bucket of water
to her grandmother’s tent, next to hers.
She was sitting in her tent, reading a book
she’d read twenty times before,
the one book she had. He
was combing his younger brother’s hair.
He was climbing a tree barren of leaves
to see if he could see his father
walking back from where
he had gone for food. He
was taking his first steps
across from his uncle, his one
surviving relative. She
was doing arithmetic homework,
assigned by her teacher
who had been teaching children
in a tent, with workbooks
she made herself. The child
was subtracting two-digit numbers
from other two-digit numbers
when suddenly she was shot
in the neck. Then she herself
had to be subtracted from the group
who met in the teacher’s
tent later that day. Count
the hours, the minutes. Count the children.
Count the bullets.

Day 1,019

For Mira: still alive, doing well, medically evacuated, on the long road to healing
With gratitude to Dr Mimi Syed

She was playing by herself
on the morning
of her older sister’s birthday.
Mira, then four. Her parents
were trying to make a cake.
They were going to celebrate
though it was in the middle
of a genocide. Though
they had been displaced.
Though they were living
in a tent and not in a house.
Four. Playing just outside the tent
by herself. Thinking
about the sweet cake
they would eat, the songs
they would sing to her sister.
That’s when the quadcopter
began hovering over her
like a bird of prey. That’s
when it stopped, took aim,
like a hawk, a vulture.
ready to kill. To consume.
That’s when the bullet
sent by the soldier
nowhere in sight
lodged in her brain.
Mira. Four years old.
That’s when she fell.
Miraculously, still
breathing. That’s
when everything
went blank: no more
birthday cake. No more songs.

Day 1,018

The child is paralyzed
who had been standing
in front of her tent. A bullet
to her neck, precisely
in a place where it can’t be
removed; lodged there
to do its nerve-deadening work
every minute of every day
for the rest of her life.
One bullet the length
of a finger. One bullet
fired by a soldier
five or six years older
than this girl, who grew up
playing video games. Targeting
what he wanted to target.
Practicing. Getting his aim
just right. Never mind
that this time it was a girl
who loved running. Loved
swimming. Loved
doing cartwheels. Loved walking
out to the sea, standing there
feeling small waves
come in from a place
beyond the horizon. A place
where things might
be different.