Day 562

Here is an x-ray of this child’s hand:
see below the knuckles
something that looks
like an inverted rocket, like a toy 
rocket a child might make
from paper and rubber bands, 
to launch with a friend
outside the house.  But this
is no toy.  This
is a bullet, launched
by a sniper who fixed the child
in his crosshairs, who targeted
this hand.  Hand intended
to hold a pen, a paintbrush,
a ball, a whittling knife.  Hand
intended to hold another’s hand,
to hold an infant, a spoon, a steering wheel,
a phone, a doorknob. And even 
if the bullet can be removed,
what will heal this child
of the memory of pain, what
will blur for him 
the thin dividing line 
between childhood
and a different awareness?

Day 561

The metal pots and pans in the tent
were melted by fire
from the bomb’s explosion.
The canvas tent
lay collapsed in a pile of ash,
melted. Even the bones 
of the children were melted.
Nothing to know them by,
nothing to recognize.
Their mother lay with them,
melted.  A woman from a nearby tent
told of the children playing
the night before: running
between tents,
kicking a ball.  They had walked
to see family; had eaten
what little there was to eat,
lay down in their tent to sleep.
Now they will need no graves.
Now their ravaged bodies 
will be absorbed
by dust.  Now there is nothing
to know them by.  They lived.
They played.  They laughed.
Their mother held them
as they slept.  Far
from where they were burned,
the ball the children had played with
had rolled away.
Was whole.  Would be found now
by other children.

Day 560

Eighteen minutes 
to evacuate the hospital:
You’re sitting with your father —
elderly, frail, wounded by shrapnel,
barely conscious.  Eighteen
minutes to pull 
the iv’s, eighteen minutes
to lift him carefully 
out of his bed, wrap blankets
around him to keep him
warm, make certain 
his open wounds
are covered by 
whatever there is
to cover them. 
Eighteen minutes
to swing him 
gently onto your back,
run cautiously
down the hospital stairs,
surrounded by so many
others doing
the same. Your father
moaning, struggling
to breathe.  You,
remembering how
he used to carry you
on his strong shoulders
through streets abundant
with gardens, all the way
to the sea.

Day 559

A child in a wheelchair
is rolling it with his arms, rolling it
on the rocky, dusty ground, when suddenly
fire falls from the sky, ignites
the boy.  The boy is burning alive
in his wheelchair and no one
can stop it, no one
can get near enough.  A woman tries
throwing a blanket to quell
the flames, but it doesn’t, the blanket
falls to the ground in the wind
from the fire. The boy
is screaming, screaming
the names of his mother, his father.
At last the flames, having nothing
more to consume, abate.  Those
witnessing can approach, can
see what happened.  The child
sits slumped in his wheelchair.
His body charred, his face
unrecognizable.  A man
touches the chair, metal arms
still hot.  Why is this chair
intact and the boy
dead? the man
cries out to nothing.
To everything. Wheelchair 
that had held this child
since the amputations, wheelchair
that has become his grave.

Day 558

Everyone around her is bringing her food
so she can make milk for her baby.  They
are not family, not even old friends — all
of them have just planted their tents
in that dusty field,  everyone displaced
from somewhere else — but she
has no family except her three
older children, and her husband — 
their father — was killed when the baby
was four months in the womb. Now
they are helping her try to keep this one alive.
It’s chilly, windy.  Two of the older children
lie on either side of the baby, blankets
under and over them, to keep her warm.
The mother is holding the two year old,
who’s crying now because he’s hungry,
That’s when the women come in 
from the neighboring tents
with rice, cooked lentils, freshly baked bread,
even an orange!  She feeds her two year old
first, then — because the women insist
they’ll bring more — takes a large portion
of lentils and rice for herself.  Where
did they get this?  She wonders.
Are they depriving themselves? She looks
at her baby, who has opened her eyes
now, stares up at her sisters.
There will be milk enough
for you today, her mother tells her,
warming the cold tiny hands 
between her own.

Day 557

We rebuild what they destroy
again and again
They bomb our homes to rubble:
We retrieve whatever we can use
and use it.
The man and his family
have left their home in Shujaiya, told
to evacuate; they evacuate,
return the following day.  Where
their home had been
is a mound of stones, pieces
of plastic, broken pipes.  The man
picks up a plank of wood:  holds it,
studies it.  Maybe this
could be a new wall, he tells
himself.  In a matter of hours
he builds a room
open to light and air, lays blankets
on the floor of it, tells his family
Here we will sleep
tonight.  Here
we will live and remain.
All of our days.

Day 556

a murdered medical aid worker

When his phone was discovered
his mother found that her son
had recorded his own death.  Some
who’d accompanied him
were already dying; he knew
what would happen.  First
a video; then — when
he became too weak — only his voice.
Forgive me for the pain
this causes you, he said, and told
the story until his whole story
was finished. The phone
went on recording — video: blood 
in the field, a clear sky, grasses.
The phone kept going
til its battery ran out.  His mother
watching, listening, over and over,
Forgive me.  Thinking she heard
his last pained stammering
breaths before the only sounds
were from others, from birds 
passing randomly — some
searching for prey? — over
the field.

Day 555

The boy was getting water for his family.
Buckets nearly as large as he was,
but this was something he did
every day.  Those who saw him
wondered how he could carry them,
walk holding tight to their metal handles;
but always he was proud he never
spilled a drop.  So when the plane
let loose its bomb
right there on the road
where the boy was walking,
the first thing he thought about
was the water.  What time
did he have to think
anything?  Those
who found him were shocked
to find the two buckets
under his chest, the boy
protecting the water
until the end.  His small shattered
body soaked, his blood
staining the water red.

Day 554

A child stood on the stones
where her house had been,
looking west at the sunset,
singing a song as she watched
the sky change.  She made
her song of the names
of all her sisters and 
brothers, her uncles 
and an aunt, her grandfather’s
name and her two grandmothers
and the grandfather who had died
before she was born, whose name
she’d heard every day
from her father, his son,
whose name was also in her song.
Only her mother’s name was not
there because her mother
was still alive.  Every name
in her song was the name of one
gone:  who by bombing, who by
sniper’s bullet, who by sickness,
who by hunger, who by fire, who
by thirst.  The child was singing
a dirge, a litany of belonging,
of a family that had been whole
and hers.  She was singing it
to the sun as it melted
into the water, water streaked
blood red with its
dissolving … She was singing it
for the first silver stars
appearing, who seemed
to pulse in rhythm with the names.

Day 553

Once — not that long
ago, before everything
happened — you dreamed
of being a teacher.  You had teachers
you loved.  They encouraged you.
You listened, when they taught,
for the ways they explained
things:  this is the subject,
this, the predicate.  This
is the object. (The occupation forces
bombed the city)  You told yourself
you’d learn to explain
like that (passive tense: the teacher
was assassinated): clearly,
step by step.  You vowed
you’d speak gently
to your students, yet require
much.  You listened
to what your friends
said about teachers
they liked (the sniper
shot the child — prepositional
phrase — in the head), promised yourself
you’d do it well.  Subject
predicate object:  The bomb
obliterated the school. The teacher
taught his final class.