Day 430

A mother goes to Cairo with her daughter
so the child can have surgery for her leg,
destroyed by shrapnel.  Somehow
they have been given permission 
to leave.  She goes, leaving
her other children behind
with their father, knowing
she won’t be able to get back,
sick with fear every day
that a bomb will kill them, that
one of them will lose a leg,
an arm.  She sits in a chair
in the hospital room
thinking about the brutal choice
she has had to make, listening
to her daughter talk on the phone
with her brothers as though
they were simply on vacation,
as though this were some ordinary
time, as though every word
they speak were not in danger
of being the last.  Outside
the window of their room,
birds fly high in the sky.
If they’re fast, if they don’t
tire, if no drone
severs their wings, they will make it 
across the borderless air.

Day 429

What she loved best was to dance.
Once her dreams were populated
with pliés, jetés, toe shoes,  
extravagantly lit stages.
Now shrapnel inhabits her spine,
one leg is gone, the other paralyzed.
She rolls her wheelchair through dust,
watching other children run.  Sometimes
she tries to stand, pulls herself up
with her arms, which are still
strong, which still
belong to her.  At night she waves her arms
through the air as though
they could propel her through time,
through distances.  In darkness her arms
dance like wind,
trees, flame.  Sudden explosions,
the pain of loss. Then she sees
for a moment it’s possible
they could tell the whole story.

Day 428

(from a photograph)

A teenage boy stands in the ruins of a street
holding a young cat.  The cat, certainly born
to a starving cat mother in these last
months, is thin, even bony.  The boy too
is bony.  He cradles the kitten
as though she were everything
he ever loved.  The kitten looks
at him as though asking what world
this is that she has come into: nothing
to eat, no water, no warmth.  How
she has found her way to him
we don’t know.  What we know
is that he, fourteen or fifteen years
old, is also hungry.  His head 
is bandaged; what wounded him
may well have taken out his family.  The cat, too,
may have no mother:  hunger,
infection, the fatigue of caring
for a litter and finding nothing
to eat?  The kitten stares
at the boy, something
in his eyes she recognizes.  Is it
loneliness? desperation? A kind of love
beginning between them.

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.