Day 427

The girl puts her hand on her brother’s shoulder,
reassures him she’ll be all right.
She’ll be the one to go out looking
for bread.  Her brother is tired.  All afternoon
he’s been pulling bodies out of the rubble:
friends, neighbors.  The girl
puts on her brother’s sweater, the one
sweater they have between them.  
She steps out into the early darkness,
walks past tents where people sit
talking about their day, past
children crying, half-dressed, cold.
Past a woman sitting alone, singing
something that sounds like a dirge
or a lullaby.  Walks past people
carrying empty pots and a boy
who is eating half a banana
and looks at her, breaks off
a piece, offers it to her.  She takes
it, tastes its sweetness.  Out there
beyond the tents the sky
is vast. A thin crescent moon,
almost golden, hangs over the distant hills
amid a few stars.  It’s the last
thing she sees before the explosion.

Day 426

Bring water to the tent
so the children can drink.
So they can wash their faces
stained with tears, with dust, with fear, with
disbelief.  Bring water
so they can cool themselves,
so they can clean their wounds.
It’s been long since they bathed, since they felt
soothing hot water run down
their small backs.  No water
to wash the sticky fluids of birth
from their newborn brother, no water
to soak the cloth laid on their mother’s
forehead.  Bring water so they can
heal.  Bring water so they can go on living.

Day 425

Body that has been washed, clothed, nursed, 
fed with a spoon, wrapped in a blanket, a towel,
a cloth, a shawl.  Body that has been touched, held,
stroked, caressed.  Body that has bled.  Body
that has been bandaged, soothed, salved.  Body
that has known heat, cold, sweat, sea water, ice,
wind, rain.  The feel of grass.  The feel of soil.
Body that has been wracked with pain,
been beaten, kicked, thrown.  Body that has
fallen.  Body that has knelt.  Body that
has bent, crouched, hidden, closed.  Body 
that has opened in love.  Body that has shaken 
with fear.  Body that has tasted sweetness, bitterness,
salt of tears.  Body that has rocked with laughter.
Body that has broken, split apart with longing,
body that has hungered, thirsted.
Body that has been measured, has grown, has
run, climbed, danced. Body that has been tended
in fever.  Body that has lain down
at the end of day.  Body that is torn,
shattered, carried away in bags, vaporized by bombs.
Body that hasn’t been found, that leaves
no trace, that is one with the dust,
that won’t be buried, that can’t be named.

Day 424

The child lies in his hospital bed,
his sister bends over him.  She
is telling him a story about their family.
She is reminding him of a day
they all went to the beach:  the waves,
the ball they played with, the caves
they made in the sand.  She is talking to him
about their parents, their older brothers.
She does not remind him they’re dead.
She does not say they are under the rubble.
She does not talk about how they were trapped,
or how, of all of them, only these two
remain. She wets a cloth 
in a shallow bowl of water,
holds it to his lips, wipes his forehead.
He tries to stretch his arms toward her 
but has to be satisfied with moving his shoulders
a little, since his arms are gone.  Remember
that day, he says to her, and these
are the only words he has spoken
in days, you buried me
in the sand? 

Day 423

A boy, fourteen, learns his father
has been killed on his way
to deliver food.  Who, now,
will bring flour and milk
to the hospital?  Stomachs
empty, eyes empty.  The boy
steps out into the place in the road
still stained with his father’s blood.
Looks around as though for the first time.
So little left standing of the neighborhood
where he played, learned
to ride a bike, walked
to school.  No one outside.
No one to dig those 
who may still be breathing
from under the rubble.  No
medicine to give them, no
surgeon left at the hospital,
to care for them,
no light, no fuel, no water. Where,
he wonders, will they take
his father’s body? No room in the graveyard
to bury the dead.

Day 422

They are not wholly gone, the family
who lived in this fallen house:
they will sprout up as grass
when the concrete is lifted,
they will feed the roots of new trees.
New flowers will bloom
where the children who grew here
ran, climbed, stomped in puddles.
If you look long enough
at the charred walls, the collapsed roof,
you might see them, hands
and feet touching nothing,
drifting in and out of their torn flesh,
so newly dead they still
remember their names, the smell
of the smoke that engulfed them.
Slowly under the rubble
their bodies are returning
to the earth.  Their burnt skin
strips off like treebark, insects
and worms will work it
until it is soil.

Day 421

They are not wholly gone, the family
who lived in this fallen house:
they will sprout up as grass
when the concrete is lifted,
they will feed the roots of new trees.
New flowers will bloom
where the children who grew here
ran, climbed, stomped in puddles.
If you look long enough
at the charred walls, the collapsed roof,
you might see them, hands
and feet touching nothing,
drifting in and out of their torn flesh,
so newly dead they still
remember their names, the smell
of the smoke that engulfed them.
Slowly under the rubble
their bodies are returning
to the earth.  Their burnt skin
strips off like treebark, insects
and worms will work it
until it is soil.

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.