Day 256

(with love for Refaat)

No pause, there is none.  No respite.
And yet when she wakes she is grateful
for light.  Grateful for the breath
of her children beside her.  They
are still there, despite everything.
Outside the tent there are people moving,
gathering weeds to eat, taking cupsful
of water from a jug someone has brought.
Day begins.  People greet one another,
ask how the night was.  Once she dreamed
of the books she would write; now
it is just about staying alive, keeping
her children alive.  Hour to hour. 
The smallest one wakes,
cries. She is thinking of what
she will feed him; her breasts empty,
the bag where she keeps what food
she can find, empty.  She takes him
in her arms, sings to him. ( If I must die
you must live/to tell
my story….) Later
she will go looking.  For now
what she can offer him
is a song. This story.

Day 255

The child has lost an eye.
When they bombed her house
some debris flew into it
and took with it half her world.
She’s four.  Now everything
will look different to her.
Now she will see what’s
in front of her
with the eye that looks outward.
And with the other, the one
that can only see what’s missing,
she scans the landscapes of loss.
Her mother.  Her friend.  Her street.

Day 254

There was a bird whose feet
were caught in the wires,
and a group of people who came
to save him.  It seemed important;
so many were dying, hundreds
in only a matter of hours.  One
started to climb a utility pole.  Another
boosted him up til he found a foothold.
Others held blankets to catch the bird
if he were injured and couldn’t
fly. Still others — a lot
of them, kids — stood by
and cheered.  Every step
nearer the bird drew louder
cheers, until the man
who was climbing had reached
the top.  The wires
were live with current; the climber
cautious, not knowing
whether the next touch would bring
shock, even death.  And the bird
crying out in pain, in fear.  The crowd
crying out.  At last the climber
grasped the trapped foot, held it
between his fingers, pulled the wire
back with his other hand, and the bird
took off into the sky
as though this had been simply
a small event.  The climber
climbed down, swarmed
by the crowd.  Let it be known,
one young man said, stepping up
onto a wooden box that was
somehow there, that on this day
there occurred a liberation!
Bombs, drones in the background.
The bird flying far, far, beyond
where anyone could see. 

Day 253

The road strewn
with pieces of lives:  a towel, a tv, 
A pair of running shoes, debris that is
unrecognizable but there are kids
in the boredom of late afternoon
between bombings, playing
in the road, attempting
to fit one shattered thing to another. 
The road strewn with old tools
and pieces of new ones.  Smartphones.
Faucets.  These were the things
we lived with.  This
was the way we lived.
These were the objects of our love
and of our solitude; these
were what we thought we could use
to construct our days.
And among these things 
lie bodies.  Among these things,
a severed arm.  A hand.  Will anyone come,
one of the kids asks,
and sew this hand
back onto whoever has lost it?
The kids stop their playing,
look up to see what sound it is
that comes from the sky.
And how will they find that person?
And where will they get
a needle that can do this?
And with what thread?

Day 252

What she remembers best from that night
was her niece’s long blond hair.
Maryam.  Eight years old.  She
had been put to bed by her mother
and was sleeping beside her little brother.
I do not know how to go on
telling this story.  The woman
who told it, Reem, was the one
survivor.  They had eaten, talked, read.
Gone to bed.  The zone
they were in was supposed to be
safe. Reem awakened
to find the ceiling collapsed
on top of her.  How
did she breathe?  How
did she dig her way
out?  Rock 
by rock in the dark, slab
by slab.  With what
strength?  She stood,
walked.  And then
saw Maryam, with whom
she’d been playing only hours
before. Maryam’s long
blond hair.  Straight.  Halfway
down her back.  Still brushed,
shining, the way her mother
brushed it every night before
bed, tied it so it wouldn’t 
tangle.  The tie still there.  Maryam
dead on the ruined floor
of the house, blood
streaming from her mouth
but her hair
perfect, untouched, long,
down her back.  Shining.  Not
tangled.

Day 251

Imagine a woman about to give birth.
Explosions — continuous — overhead.
Imagine she has wanted this child.
Imagine she has another child, a small daughter,
who presses her ear to her mother’s body
to hear the movements of her unborn brother.
Imagine they sing.  Imagine the sound
of their singing interrupts the sound
of the explosions.  The time nears, the woman
begins to wish the infant could stay in her womb
another week, another month.  Why help him
into this world, where the stench of rotting garbage
cannot overcome the stench of death?
Inside he is safe, his mother and sister
can sing him asleep, awake.   (Lucerito
de mi alma, I sang to Ciel
the day she was born — little light
of my soul, fierce glint
of solace — but what 
solace here?  What light?)

Day 250

(Kriah: Nuseyrat)

A man stands in front of his ruined house,
tearing his clothes, which were
already rags.  His wife killed, his two
daughters, little son who hadn’t
yet stood. Niece, nephew,
brother.  His mother, his father.
With each rip
he names one of the murdered:
the front of his shirt, the collar,
each sleeve, each
button.  It seems
the names of his dead
will never end, the clothes
will always bear being torn
one more time.  The man
is a bone-dry tree, 
bark stripped; a field
ravaged by wind. He stands
among slabs of concrete,
almost naked. Strands of cloth
hang from his shoulders
like broken flesh,
like twisted ribbons.  

Day 249

The surgeon is trying to put the boy’s leg back together.
Yesterday the boy was running, going to get a few vegetables
unexpectedly let in.  Today the boy’s femur
is exposed, bright white bone surrounded by blood.
His life from now on divided from here.  There is no
anesthesia, but he says to the surgeon, Go ahead.
Save my leg.  Please save it. And the young surgeon —
whose teachers have been killed, whose supervisors
have been tortured, killed — does what he can, gives the boy
a sponge to press between his teeth when the pain
is unbearable.  Puts the boy’s leg back together.
It will be scarred.  It may get infected.  It may be
shorter than the other leg, but it will be whole,
it will be a leg the boy can walk on.  Even run. 

Day 248

All she wants is to go home.
There was a room with curtains she parted
so she could sit at the window, watch people
go by on the street.  The room is gone, the curtains
gone, the people are gone.  Even the street is gone.
All her ten years, living in that house, sitting
by that window.  Friends would come,
call for her to play outside.
I am thinking of how, in the face of great loss,
it’s the simplest things we remember: the feel
of the hem of the curtain between her fingers.
The way the window was streaked
with rain that had fallen, and what it was like
to leap from the chair, run to the door,
turn the knob to the left….

Day 247

Late afternoon light.  Alstrumeria
everywhere in my garden.  Rosemary, mint.
The lilacs past, calailies dried on their stalks.
I am thinking of children living, dying in tents.
I am thinking of those who were born in tents
in ’48, who died in tents a week ago
in Rafah.  A tent:  a temporary enclosure.
Our births and our deaths, temporary
enclosures. The plums on this tree are red,
inedible: by August
they’ll grow dark and sweet.  
The way these children will not ripen.
(Who could love a child and not
want to imagine him grown?  Not imagine
he will use what we teach
him?  Feed him?)