Day 332

A man kneels in the rubble of his house,
searching for the remains of his children.
Anything — a sock, a piece of a t-shirt.
A hand.  A leg.  He kneels, weeping,
maybe praying.  Afraid of what he might find,
afraid he will find nothing.  Planes overhead.
Late summer.  The sky, already darkened,
darkening earlier.  He kneels, sorts 
through fallen concrete, shreds of a pillow,
a curtain, rung of a chair.  Is it enough
that he has lost everything?  That he can find
nothing he’s looking for?  A soldier, turning
what had been the corner of the street,
wantonly shoots him.  Stands 
casually, one hand
in a pocket, smoking a cigarette now,
watching blood stain the man’s shirt,
the concrete, the rubble
he had been kneeling in.

Day 331

He was a farmer, he had an orchard.
He grew figs, he grew plums and apricots.
He had chickens.  He had goats.  Every morning
he stepped out of his house, scattered seed
for the chickens, put scraps from his family’s meals
into troughs for the goats.  Other food as well.
The goats followed him through the orchard.
They knew him, they rubbed their long noses
against his hands.  He loved the softness
of their eyes.  He named them,  he named
the chickens.  There was sun.  There was water.
The figs ripened, the plums and apricots.
His children played with the goats.  They held
the chickens.  The smallest one buried her face
in their feathers.  He sold the figs.  He sold
the plums, the apricots, the eggs.  He made cheese
from the goats’ milk, tended their kids.
It’s all gone now, even the children, even the goat
who followed him, once, into the house
and he laughed, he held the goat’s head
in his hands, looked into her eyes.  It’s all gone,
even the fruit, even the smallest child
and the feathers.  Only the man survives
and looks at the charred trees, the ruined soil
he had touched with his hands every day
for years.  Nothing remains but a few scattered seeds.
He makes some shallow holes with his fingers,
covers the seeds, wonders how anything living
could ever return to this place.  He thinks for a moment
he hears his children’s laughter, but it’s only
the cries of birds who pass overhead,
and the man stands, watches, 
leaves the rest of the seeds 
uncovered for them to eat.

Day 330

For years the sisters lay together in one bed,
whispering to each other when the lights were out,
telling secrets, planning their days.
For years they brushed each other’s hair, walked
together to school, wore each other’s clothes.
Now only one of them is alive.  Now the living sister
reaches in the night and finds only empty space.
Now she talks silently to herself
so as not to disturb the others in the shelter,
one shelter, then another and another.  Now
there is no school to walk to, no tangled hair
of her sister’s to brush.  She is 
half a clip, half a lid, half a scissor.
A broken branch with the leaves blown away,
a single shoe.  She lies in the dark
counting things that have missing parts.
She writes her name and erases half of it.

Day 329

The feel of skin, soft skin, your infant sister’s skin.
The smoothness of petals.  The roughness
of sand.  The cold shock of the sea
after months of winter.  Do you fall asleep
counting these things?  Do you dream,
sometimes, that this horror has ended,
that you are walking on a street
with houses, gardens, red and yellow roses
making the air fragrant (the air no longer filled
with the stench of everything rotting)?  Do you reach
for those you loved who are no longer there
and feel, sometimes, that you touch them?
Can you tell yourself that you breathe 
for them, you sing for them, you walk
for them?  Oh child: we are made
of stars and sea and sand, forest and desert.
We are made of one another, our cells
interwoven, our blood intermixed. Can you
take solace in this, does it ring
anything but hollow for you?

Day 328

Two brothers killed for no reason
except they were walking together
on a dusty road on a hot afternoon.
One had grown probably as tall
as he was going to grow, or nearly;
the other was younger; his parents
will never know how tall
he would have been.
I am thinking about the morning
of that day:  the way everyone there
knows any day could be
their last — any hour, any minute.
Yet the boys woke, dressed, went
together to wherever they went
to do whatever they did:
a makeshift school?  a soccer game?
And never returned.  What was returned
to their parents wasn’t even
bodies:  parts of bodies.
How understand that?  How to imagine
their last conversation, the one
they must have been in the middle of
when the bomb struck.

Day 327

I am writing for you, Refaat.
I am trying to tell your story
as you asked us to do. It is not
the story you would have told.
It should be a different story.
It should not be the story
of all of you sleeping in the livingroom
so if you were bombed 
you would die together.
Refaat, you did not die
with your wife, your children,
your little daughter Alma
who was learning to read,
your eldest daughter
who died four months later,
her infant son dying with her.
This should never, Refaat,
have been your story
or anyone’s.  Your story should have been
about holding your grandson, watching
Alma read more and more, start to tell
her own stories.  I am trying
to tell a story I am only learning.
Day by day I learn it, day by day
I listen, listen for your voice, tell myself
I am living, these days, to tell your story
(If I must die/ you must live/
to tell my story…)
so as not to forget it, not
to abandon it.

Day 326

The children squat on the dusty ground.
They are letting insects crawl on their hands,
watching the way they move their legs, their heads.
One of them thinks, these insects are whole.
Another thinks, they have been eating, moving.
Who would wish to be an insect?  And yet,
a third child thinks, their lives, unlike ours, 
are not that different from how they were.
The children aren’t afraid
of being stung, bitten.  They know
there are wounds far worse
than those.  They put their hands
on the ground, let the insects discover
they’re free to go.  The children look
toward the remnants of houses,
the charred fields
where the insects are crawling.

Day 325

Save what can be saved.
A girl searches through the rubble of her house
to find the necklace her grandmother gave her.
Unfathomably, she finds it.  Her grandmother —
killed in a bombing — had read to her, sung
to her, cared for her after her mother
was killed in an earlier bombing.
Save what can be saved.  It’s
a simple necklace, a glass stone
on a silver chain; but the stone
is the color of the sea, the color
of the girl’s eyes and the grandmother’s
eyes, and the girl had worn it
every day, unclasped it carefully
every night so the stone
wouldn’t be lost.  And now her grandmother
is lost, and her brothers, her father.
And what she has left 
is this necklace, which she holds
this minute in her hand, stares
at it, sees the sea and her grandmother
and some survived piece of herself
in the glass stone, and slowly,
slowly amid the rubble of what
had been her life she puts her hands
behind her neck, opens the clasp.

Day 324

We say it cannot get worse and it gets worse.
We say the sky cannot grow any darker 
when it is still day, yet darkness covers it
like a shroud.  We say there are no more shrouds
to wrap the children in, we will have to use towels.
And when we use all the towels we will 
rip our clothing, tear it to ribbons, not to bury them
naked.  Not to think of them chilled
in the chilly ground.  We say the trees
are still rooted though they’ve lost
their branches.  We say the soil
still holds what they need.  We say
goodnight, goodnight, we have made it
one more day, and tomorrow 
we will tell each other the same words,
we will touch our hands to each other’s cheeks,
we will count the living and the wounded,
we will remind ourselves that the sea’s rhythms
do not change, that the songs we have sung
do not change, that the dead are not gone
but speak through us, teach us what to remember.

Day 323

Today I am thinking of Abubaker
in Deir el Balah.
His beautiful smile, his love of sports.
I am thinking of the way he spoke, only weeks ago,
about the bombs falling on the houses around his
and how, when asked if he needed to get somewhere else,
he smiled, knowing there is nowhere to go.
I am thinking of Abubaker who has not
returned Nora’s text, I am thinking of Nora
waiting, checking her phone.  I am thinking
of my friend down the block whose young dog
almost died, and my friend from childhood
whose son has a mass on his chest.  I am thinking
of the beauty of the day, and Ciel speaking of joy,
and I’m thinking of Abubaker who loves
his yellow rose, praying to whatever I pray to
that he is alive….