Day 442

(from a photograph)

She stands on what may be a beach.
Someone has brushed her hair neatly,
tied it back in a bun, held it in place
with a white headband.  She wears a dress
with a tiered skirt, ruffled half-sleeves
bordered in lace.  She’s looking at something
to her left.  She could be nine, ten.  Younger?
Her feet, in white clogs, firmly planted
on pebbly sand. In the earlobe
you can see, an earring with a little stone.
Someone has been able to care for her well
at least until now. It’s only after a moment
you notice she has just one arm.  Her left arm
hangs at her side, thumb buried in the printed fabric
of her dress.  Her right arm, amputated
at the shoulder. What is she looking at, 
mouth closed so tightly, eyes clearly
focused?   Is it all she has left behind?
Everything she can remember?   
She could be holding back tears.  She may
be watching as a cat or a dog
or a younger child, maybe hobbled,
attempts to walk toward her. There’s no one else
in the picture, the space behind her
vast. You see how alone she is, this girl
with one arm standing with nothing, no one,
around her, her dress clean and ironed
as though she were going somewhere.  As though
she were able to go somewhere.

Day 441

A child walks barefoot up a road,
surrounded on both sides by bombed-out
buildings, carrying two half-gallon
milk containers.  He is going
to get water for his family,
the ones remaining. He is eight
or nine, he wears no jacket,
only a thin shirt and shorts
though it’s late December.  Who
has sent him on this errand?
What kind of water will he find?
To whom has he said what could be
(any moment the last moment)
his final goodbye?

Day 440

He awakened to cats
licking his face, nuzzling his hands.
Like him, they were hungry, weary.
Like him, they were afraid.
He who had so little food
had been feeding them for weeks.
Like him, they had no home anymore,
no warm place to sleep, no comfort.
He’d sat on slabs of fallen concrete,
tearing off bits of bread, tossing them
to the cats; they’d learned what time
he’d be there, came every day
at that time.  But now 
he lay on the ground, not moving,
blood running out of one leg, 
staining the dust.  Eyes closed.
The cats stayed by him.  One of them
licked the blood, tried to clean
his wound.  Another licked his eyelids
until he opened his eyes
and saw them, his hungry cats,
his friends.  He touched one of them
with his hand; the soft fur
stirred him, he tried to sit up,
fell back, then was able to sit again.
His leg hurt, but he could move it.
The cats settled around him, made
their soft sounds, lay down.  The man
stood.  His leg was bleeding
a little less.  He looked at the cats.
He thanked them, he thanked them
aloud. They began to walk with him
down the road, toward the hospital.

Day 439

He lay on the ground, everyone
fleeing, moving past him.
The street was unrecognizable,
the sound of footsteps, shouting,
children crying around him.
He lay there, half-conscious,
unable to move.  For a while
he imagined ordinary life:
say they were on their way
to a movie, a grocery, a café.
He drifted in and out, from 
the ruined street to things
he remembered, to a place
he’d never been, a green
quiet place where he walked,
met others who had also
disappeared,  The air
darkened, grew cold.  He found
himself making out words, then
moving a foot, a leg.  He stood.
Shook off the unnameable
places he’d been, looked out
at the world he had left
for a while, and then regained.
Joined the solemn parade
of those who were walking.

Day 438

After he lost his leg
he stopped wanting to live.
Hard to imagine staying alive
when you’re ten
and you know you’ll never run
again.  After he lost his leg
he lost his appetite, lost
his dreams, lost his sleep.
The sky closed around him,
daylight smothered him. How 
do you grieve a leg?  How
do you learn
from one day to forever
to say shoe
and not shoes, foot and not feet?

Day 437

They were inseparable, the two girls.
Sisters, four years apart; but they looked
like twins except for the height.  Their names
rhymed, their smiles rhymed, they loved
the same stories.  At night they would lie
in their beds and talk until their mother
had to come and quiet them.  In the morning
they called out together for breakfast, got ready
for school together, walked together with matching
backpacks, found each other as the day wore on
in the hallways, on the playground.  Now they sleep
in the same grave, one grave for the two of them.
They will sleep there forever, inseparable.
Their mother visits them, carries
in her pockets small shreds she could find
of their clothing to keep them close
to her, stained
with the blood of one of them?  Both?  

Day 436

The smell of rain contends 
with the stench of death, stench
of rotting corpses, sewage.  Rain
carves rivers through ruined streets;
children play in them,
laugh as the sudden current
runs through their fingers.  What sea of grief
will this water spill into?  Whose
lives will it carry, whose memories,
whose histories?  What words
will be drowned there?  What thoughts
that will never be spoken?  Whose
love, whose touch, whose learning,
whose despair, whose tormented nights
have become this sludge, this debris? And what
will remain when the sun dries the land,
when the children’s laughter is silenced,
when everything sinks back into dust?

Day 435

What he wanted to do more than anything
when he could still see
was to build things:  houses, bridges, schools.
He would sit on the floor for hours,
balancing one block on top of another.  
At school, he was the one who built the sets
when there was a play.  At home, he made a shelter
so he and his brothers could play outside
even in rain.  Now there’s no house,
no school, no shelter.  Now there are no blocks
to build with, just slabs of concrete lying at angles
on unrecognizable streets.  He would build
a neighborhood, build a city, rebuild all the cities
if only he could. He sits in a tent, rain dripping steadily
through the rain fly.  Now that he’s blinded,
how will he see the way one board fits
against another?  Can his hands 
teach him the shapes of things?

Day 434

The infant is six months old.
He has no mother, no father,
no one has been found yet 
to take him in.  The surgeons
have operated on his wound,
have kept him in the hospital
for two days.  Now the hospital
has been told to evacuate; though
the doctors are staying, they are
rolling the patients out.  Where
will they send him, this
six month old with no
parents?  Who will there be
to hold him, soothe him? Who
will clean his wound, and with
what water?

Day 433

A girl finds a pen, draws a picture
of her house:  her house the way it was.
Her house with its yellow curtains, her house
with brightly painted rooms, with someone
always in the kitchen, with children
sitting on the rug, with a mother
bringing them a bowl of fruit
and a father sitting at a desk, writing.
The pen has been half-buried
in the dust; she wonders
for a minute who it used to
belong to, what they did
with it.  She draws.  With each line
she makes, the house grows
whole again:  an uncle now
sits in a large blue chair.
Two cousins have come to the door.
Steam rises from a pot on the stove.
Outside the windows, trees:  orange trees,
olive trees, jasmine, a rosebush
with a yellow rose. She draws and draws.
Night may fall, she thinks; morning may come
and still she will be bringing back her house:
her street, her neighborhood, even her school.
It’s all coming to her again, with each line
her life resurrects itself.  But the ink
grows pale, the pen starts leaving
large empty spaces on the page. 
Soon there will be nothing left
to draw with.  Soon whatever 
she hasn’t drawn will be condemned
to remain in the ghost-world.