Day 392

On a single day, in a single hour,
you lost twenty-one people
in your family.  Father, brother, sister,
sister, niece, nephew:  count them,
name them, tell their stories
so they will not go under the rubble
forgotten.  This one was going to university.
This one was fixing his house.  This one
was ten years old, this one twelve.
The smallest one was just learning to talk.
Speak of their voices, the shapes of their mouths,
the gestures they made when they were excited.
Speak of the things they liked to eat, the way
one of them smiled a little when she
was embarrassed. Imagine the children
grown.  Imagine them loving, singing, working.
Hold each of them in your mind. Say the goodbyes
you never got to say.  Carry them with you
as you go about your day, though no one
can see them:  a grief so heavy
it bows your shoulders as you walk.

Day 391

A choir of children in a makeshift school.
Their teacher plays a stringed instrument —
oud? — to accompany them.  They’re young,
maybe eight, ten, eleven.  Their voices
are sweet, soft.  They are singing a song —
maybe a kind of ballad — with 
a refrain.  They’re aware
of the video someone is making; some of them 
look occasionally toward the camera.  One girl looks
for a longer time than the others.  Her face
intense, her eyes clear.  Her arms thin:  how long
has it been since she’s eaten anything 
but bread, a little cheese, zaatar? How many
more months, weeks, days, will she survive?  And what
will it be that takes her:  hunger? sickness? a random
sniper shot?  Fire? She keeps singing as she watches
the camera, as though someone is purposefully
making a record of this:  this song, this serious
deliberate gaze. That she has lived.

Day 390

What will you tell this child
when she asks where her sister is?
Every night they slept 
with their arms around one another.
Then the air turned black.  The noise
of the bombing blocked all
other sounds.  She called
for her mother.  Her mother
called out, called her name. She called
for her sister. No answer.  Chaos.
Chaos of voices, screams. Her mother
making her way over the rubble, picking up
the child, running with her
out of the crumbling
shelter.  No other voices. Walls
collapsing.  Flames. Flames, more
darkness.  What will you tell this child
when she asks why you didn’t run back
inside the shelter, look for her sister?
What will she do now
without a sister?

Day 389

He had just begun crawling when he lost
his arms and legs.  Now others
must move him.  He
is so young, will he remember
what it was to propel across a room
swiftly, to have a destination
he knew he could reach?  His mother
holds him, rocks him, tells him
that one day when this
is all over they will find
a doctor who will give him
mechanical arms and legs,
and he will be taught
to use them as though
they were his own,
and this thought
consoles her, and the knowledge
that he — bandaged
as he is, still in pain as he is —
smiles when he looks up at her,
seems to know what
she is thinking.

Day 388

The father in his white hospital coat
is bending over his little son
in his white shroud
Warplanes fly overhead
among white clouds
Having taken this child,
they are aiming at others
The father has taken an hour 
from his work
with children at the hospital
to be with his son one last time
before the earth closes around him
And he — father, doctor — returns
to the hospital
to staunch the wounds
of other children
with white gauze taken
from the bodies
of yet other children 
who have died, washed
in whatever water there is
and in the tears of their parents

Day 387

Her father will always remember
that she was coming toward him
when she was killed.  He
had been gone, in hiding, for
several days; but now
he was back, he walked
toward where his family was staying,
waved when he saw his boy
playing outside with a few
other boys.  The boy
called to the girl
and the girl came running
from where she had been.
Running on her small
legs, in her yellow
dress, her red Crocs.
She was four.  She saw
her father and ran toward him
the way any four year old would
who hadn’t seen her father
for days.  He squatted,
spread his arms to receive her,
but she was stopped on the way
by a sniper’s bullet.  Her brother
watched.  Her father — in shock — didn’t
stand up, as though if he kept
squatting there, something
would change, some ghost
of his daughter would finally
reach him, leap joyfully into his arms.

Day 386

In the photograph the children look
like they’ve fallen asleep 
next to each other; as if the adults
are in another room, talking and laughing,
voices speaking over other voices, interrupting,
maybe a tv on, and they’ve all had dinner
and the children have played together
and watched a movie and the hour
has grown late and they all
got tired and fell asleep,
all of them still dressed in their jeans
and t-shirts, the girl with her long hair
fallen over her eyes, the littlest boy
crowded between two older ones,
and soon the adults will come
into the room and throw blankets
over the children and turn out
the lights.  And it will be quiet
again in the house and the moon
will come and shine from the window
and all will sleep
peacefully til morning…But this
is a photograph of children
who died in a bombing, whose blood
(now wiped from their faces)
spilled copiously onto the floor
of the shelter  (no
house, no other room)
where their parents (no
laughter, no voices, no
moon through a window)
also were murdered.

Day 385

(Jabaliya)

They are digging through the rubble
to find the girls, and what they find
is a piece of green t-shirt, a hem
of a dress.  No voice, no crying, no
halting breaths.  A small boy stands
holding his father’s hand, watching
the neighbors who are still alive
dig for his sisters.  No voice, no
crying, his breathing shallow but there.
He’s hoping they’ll find them
and hoping they won’t.  Could there be a room
under the rubble where his sisters sit,
reading the books they’ve read to him?
Have the rugs fallen with the walls
so his sisters have someplace warm
to sleep?

Day 384

How can we take any more, the mother is crying out
in the darkening evening. She is holding
her children’s hands, skeletal hands, more
like the hands of the elderly.  Her children
stand on either side of her, their eyes
blank.  Tears run down her face 
as she names the collapsed house,
the grandparents dead, the friends
dead, the food gone, the water
gone, food parcels
falling on children’s heads,
killing them…How
can we take any more she
cries out again, to whom, to what?
To the sky filled with drones?  The piles
of rubble?  The bodies lying unburied
in the street?  Who is listening?  Who?

Day 383

The three year old was in his grandfather’s arms
until a minute before the sniper fired.  His grandfather
put him down on his little chair and death
took him.  Death took his thin, pale face,
his narrow shoulders, his half-smile.  His grandfather
picked him up, carried him, ran frantically
with the child in his arms, bleeding
from his mouth, his nose.  It was clear
he was dead, but his grandfather ran
with him anyway through charred streets,
past piles of concrete, fallen
blown-out houses.   Death took 
the small boy Sami to join the others,
the ones there are not even coffins for,
the ghost-children lining Death’s 
lightless foul-smelling corridors;
Death took Sami away from his grandfather,  
from arms that held him, faces
that looked with tenderness at his
face, from everything he was learning
about being in this world.  Death
stole him, closed everything
in him that was open, that took in
air, laughter, sunlight.  Death disappeared him.
Hours later, through streets just this side of Death,
his grandfather walks, holding nothing.