Day 420

Two sisters who survived being trapped
under the rubble of their house
are killed in another air strike.
Their father has shepherded them
from one ruined place to another.
In the time between the last bombing
and this one, the girls live a half-life,
can’t forget what it was 
to be buried, to have the whole weight
of death bearing down
on their bodies, to lie helpless,
confined, hearing each other’s
screams. In the time since being pulled back
into the light the girls learn
what it is to live but not live, and this
changes their days.  They die
but don’t die, they live in some tunnel
halfway between.  When they eat
they taste death, when they sleep
death taunts them.  Even the rain,
the soft air washed clean
for a moment by rain, cannot
convince them they are still in this world. 
And now death has come and sucked them 
all the way down.  Now light
cannot reach them, nor their
father’s grief.

Day 419

Their mother brings them a plate
of banana and orange slices.  They
have not eaten fruit
for over a year, have not
even seen it.  Today their mother
found fruit at the market
and brought it for them, costly
as it was.  Their joy
is palpable:  they shriek
at seeing the neatly cut
slices, run to the couch
where they’ll eat them, hug
each other, unable to contain
what they feel.  One orange.  One
banana.  They know
it’s not certain they’ll see these
again, they know — 
because everyone knows — they may not
even live to see food
from the market one
more time.  But for this
moment, none of that
erodes even a sliver
of their delight.

Day 418

Wake up, wake up, the world is on fire
the boy says to his older sister, but his sister
looks out through the flap of the tent and sees
it’s only another bomb dropped on another place
not far from where they are.  The sky over there
is orange, it’s all flame.  Her brother is shaking her,
pulling the sleeve of her sweatshirt, 
We have to get out, he’s saying,
before it comes for us, but the girl
takes him in her arms, rocks him
for a moment, then holds
him still, assures him it’s not
their time. Not now. Not yet.  Wake up wake up
the boy keeps saying, though they’re both
sitting, both looking out.  How
is it possible she’s grown
used to this?  She is wondering now
who the people are who are being killed
over there, whether there are some 
like herself, her brother,
who have lost their parents, tried 
to stay alive, keep each other alive.
Fire blooms in the sky like a strange flower.

Day 417

The boy is five.  Both his legs are wounded.
He’s the only one left
in his family. It’s been 
weeks since the bombing
and all day he screams, sobs, 
keeps calling for his father, his father
who always came when he called him;
his father who played with him, 
sang to him, read to him.  How could his father
not listen now to his cries?  How could his cries
not be loud enough, desperate enough, 
to bring his father back from the dark
nameless place where he disappeared?  And why
did his father, who took him
everywhere, not carry him with him?
(Is it because his legs don’t work?
If his legs get better, will he 
be able to find his father?)
The sky is quiet for a moment, even
the rain and the wind have stopped.
The boy looks down the hospital corridor:
it’s night, those who are not
moaning in pain or grief
are trying to sleep.  He closes his eyes
and feels his father’s hand
on his forehead, the warmth of his body.

Day 416

The doctor lies on a gurney, his thigh shattered,
his small son buried only weeks ago
outside the hospital. His wound, he says,
is no more important than anyone else’s,
His spilled blood no more tragic. He will stay
at the hospital, though the bombs keep falling.
I am thinking of pain unmedicated, wounds
festering, infections left to rage 
with no antibiotics. I am thinking of children
who spoke, standing outside another hospital,
nearly a year ago, begging the world
to listen.  “Please take care of us,” they
said.  We have not.  We have not
taken care.  I am wondering, of those, how many
are still alive.  The doctor, his voice
weakened, is promising his colleagues
that tomorrow he’ll work again.  He will not
fail his patients, whatever little he can do
for them. I sit in my still house,
everything quiet around me.  How 
we have failed all of you,
I am thinking:  we whose bodies
are whole.  We who wake and go about
the tasks of the day, we who live
among the living.

Day 415

When night falls, unending night
of winter, you tell everyone you love
goodbye:  those already asleep in the tent with you,
those sheltering elsewhere, those
who have been killed, who have starved,
who have been burned alive.  You look out
through the dust, the contaminated air,
through the darkness of your own spirit,
and you see the one star that is shining.
There in the moonless sky it pierces
the unrelenting dark, sends forth its light
to you where you are.  Across vastness,
across aeons, across narratives
of destruction, it remains. Never forget this,
it tells you.  I am here even when daylight 
and consciousness obscure me.

Day 414

Every day the boy watches the other children
kicking a ball through the dusty corridors
among tents.  Every day he remembers
what it felt like to run, to kick, the moment
of contact with the ball.  Every day his father
tells him it’s okay, he’s lucky to still
be alive — not like your cousins, not
like that boy from school who was good
at math…Every day he looks
in his father’s eyes, sees the sadness
his father’s scolding, his bravado,
is trying to shield.  At night,
in the tent, he feels his father’s body
shaking with sobs he suppresses.  Once,
waking, he saw his father reach
over to him, to where his leg
would have been, and tenderly stroke the cloth,
the cold canvas floor that separates them
from the ground.

Day 413

You come back empty handed one more time,
having gone to find food for the children.
Your breasts too are empty:  the baby
doesn’t cry anymore for milk, and that,
you know, is not a good thing.  Infant
born under bombings, infant swaddled in
fear, displacement, loss. His sisters
hold him, comfort him, while you go out
looking for something to keep you all alive
one more day.  He has been so briefly
in this world, will he be taken back
before he can walk? Sit? Grasp
one tiny hand with the other?  When he turns
his head away, is he looking
toward the mysterious place he came from, 
asking if it will receive him again,
staunch the pain of his hunger?

Day 412

Just when she thought she could walk no farther
her father said they had to walk on.
The air was heavy, rain was about to fall.  The road
smelled of blood, decaying flesh, excrement.
She had to walk, carrying her small brother,
holding her six year old sister’s hand, their father
carrying all that belonged to them, which was
practically nothing.  Rain started to fall:
first a little, then enough to soak everything.
She started thinking what it would be like
to stop:  to set down her brother, to sit
in the rain by the side of the road, to let go
her sister’s hand, to stop her ears from hearing
their crying, to block her father’s voice
telling her walk, walk.  To give up, to give in.
To let the death that was stalking her
like a hungry animal finally have its way
with her, pin her to the ground, back her
against a collapsed wall, slowly or suddenly
consume her.  To go dark.  To stop.  Just
when she closed her eyes for a minute
to see what that blindness was like, she heard
her father starting to sing.  He was singing a song
that matched the rhythm of his walking, a song
he had sung to her when she was small.  She opened
her eyes;  saw ahead of her,
against the devastation, her father’s
back, still strong.  Still upright.  She hoisted
her brother higher onto her chest, grasped
her sister’s hand more tightly.  Above them
a single bird, dipping and soaring
through gray unbroken sky.

Day 411

On the road that is not a road anymore
past the city of broken concrete
a small procession of people
carry empty pots back to where
they are staying, pots they had hoped
to fill with flour, vegetables, cheese.
A woman stops, breaks off
from the others, sits by the side
of the road, wraps her shawl
more tightly around her.  She’s tired,
cold.  She has been walking
a long time. She thinks of her child,
crying from hunger all night:  how
she promised him she’d find food
for him in the morning, how hard
it will be to show him
the empty pot.  She thinks of his small
voice, growing weaker each day.  She thinks
of his arms, how thin they are.  How
when he puts them around her waist
she can barely feel them.  How she is learning
all the ways death can take a child:
quickly — a bomb; a shot to the head —
or slowly, like this, a little at a time.
Chill air.  A metal pot
that couldn’t be filled. A slow procession
past ghosts, past the ghosts of ghosts.