Day 394

Believe me when I say these children
walked two miles to get clean water
for their family and two miles
to bring it back.  They did this
every morning, whatever
the weather.  They carried jugs,
pots, any container they could find.
Their mother waited in their tent
with the two littlest ones.  Their father
already had been killed.  The children —
six and seven — would otherwise
have been walking to school, and this
is what sometimes they pretended
to do.  There was not
a genocide, there were not drones
constantly overhead, their father
and older brothers were still
alive, there was no
chance the water would be
contaminated and if they didn’t
hurry they’d be late
for class…Believe me
when I say this is what
they pretended on their way
to get water, what
they were pretending
the moment everything
went dark, their jug
in pieces on the ground, the pots
they’d been carrying
rolling away from their bodies.

Day 393

What will you take with you
if you die? the small child 
asks his mother.  She looks at him.
It’s cold, the dark comes early.
She cannot imagine being without him
and she cannot imagine saying
I will take you, even though
that may be what he’s asking.
I’ll take the sky, she tells him,
and the birds, and the fields
of eggplant and zucchini.  I’ll take
the orange trees and the olive trees.
But then, the child responds, those things
won’t be here, I won’t be able
to see them.  I’ll take your smile
and your voice, his mother says.
I’ll take them all in a way
that will let me have them and let
you, who will still be alive, have them
too.  The child looks at his mother,
trying to understand.  Planes
fly overhead.  The sound of bombing,
that has marked their days and nights
for over a year, grows more intense.

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?