Day 572

She went to the first open pharmacy,
the one nearest to where she was staying,
to see if they had formula
for her infant.  None.  Two other
pharmacies told her the same.
She walked home, thinking
how she could feed him, how
to keep him alive.  Her milk,
sparse to begin with, long since
dried up.  No water available,
no way to assuage his hunger.
Maybe her friend, whose baby
was killed only days
ago, who had been nursing him?
Would she still have milk?
Could she ask a woman
who had no child anymore
to feed her child?  These
were the thoughts running
through her mind
as she walked, as
she approached her tent,
listening to the sound —
under the buzz of drones, 
of low-flying planes — 
of her baby crying.  His cries
still vigorous despite having
no milk; his cries — consoling
and wrenching to her
at once — telling the world
Are you listening?  I’m hungry,
I exist and I want to remain alive.

Day 571

There was a place by the sea
where we sat and talked.  There
were pastries, strong coffee, tables
far enough apart that we could
hear each other well
over the sound of the tide, the ebb
and flow of voices.  We would sit outside
when the weather was warm, our hair
damp and salty afterward.  Now
the café is gone, the tables
are gone, there are no
pastries anywhere.  You, too,
friend of so many years,
are gone.  What remains
is the memory of our long
unbroken conversation, the thread
we’d drop and pick up, drop
again and pick up. What remains
is the salt air.  The sea, its rhythm
predictable.  Eternal?

Day 570

She was your sister, a year younger.
Everyone asked if you were twins:
you looked so much alike.  Every night
you lay together in the dark,
telling stories, sharing secrets,
talking about your friends, your crushes.
Every morning you’d trade clothes,
ask her, Can I wear your blue shirt?
Should I wash your red sweater?
Every day you’d walk together
to school; then – when there was
no school — from the tent
to the place where you
could get water.  Then
from another tent to another place
for water.  Still, at night,
your voices accompanied
by the sound of drones, you’d lie
on your blanket together, whispering,
giggling, sometimes crying.  Where
is she now?  Where did the bombing
take her?  Her body so shredded
it couldn’t be found.  Only
a few strands of hair
so like your own, you thought
for a moment it was you
who had been killed.

Day 569

Your brother has lost both his arms.
One closer to the shoulder
than the other.  He is so thin
you can see all his ribs.
You remember how, when
he was little, you’d
pick him up when he stretched
both his arms to ask you, before
he knew how to ask you in words.
You remember the first time
he caught a ball you threw
for him, a big ball, light enough
for him to carry, his arms
reaching all the way
around it.  Every night now
you cry for him, though your father
has told you, Don’t cry, we’re lucky
your brother is still alive!  But you
want your brother back
with his arms, the brother
who put his hand in yours
when he was afraid, the brother
who drew horses and rainbows
for you when you were sick,
the brother who learned
to throw a ball far, farther away
than the look in his eyes,
than whatever he cries out at in his dreams.

Day 568

You wake because you have to.
You had a home, a husband, 
parents, four children.
Now your husband has been killed,
your parents are dead of illness
and starvation, and two
of your children lie
in their graves, their bodies
shattered.  Maybe they’re whole
again, you think.  Maybe the bomb
that took them should have taken
the rest of us.  Then we wouldn’t
be hungry, sick, frightened.
You allow yourself
to think that for a moment,
the first moment you lie 
looking up at the still-dark sky
through places where the tent
is ripped. But then
you stir, slowly, out
from under your blanket.  You
sit up, look at your two
living children, still
asleep. Still breathing
almost peacefully.  You know
the wearying tasks of day
will begin again, and you
will do them again because
you have to, because
you are their mother, because
they need you to feed them.
To pretend one more day
you can keep them safe
despite the destruction you know
is lurking around you, is lying
in wait for you.  Which may
or may not come for you.

Day 567

Tell me, do people feel pain
when a bomb falls on them?
The child, who is five, is asking her mother.
In another place, in a different time,
the child might ask if an apple feels pain
when you bite it, if the sky
feels pain when it’s covered by clouds.
Last night the tent where the child’s
friend was living was bombed.  The child
learned about it when she walked
just now, with her older brother,
to find her friend.  Nothing.  Shredded
limbs. Whose? The tent fallen, like a shroud
lying on top of everything. The child knew
her friend had tripped 
on a rock some days ago,
scraped her knee.  Had cried,
loud and hard, until someone
came, washed her knee, held her
until she was calmer.
It still hurts a lot, she said:  to
no one. To everyone.
The child is standing now in her tent.
Her mother looks at her, puts a hand
on the child’s head.  Now will her knee
get better? she asks. 

Day 566

in memory of Fatima Hassouna

You were murdered for telling
what happened.  Murdered (with
all of your family) for showing it,
murdered for your photographs.  Even
amid the bombing, amid hospitals
collapsing, amid children
bleeding into the dust, you went on
taking your pictures, went on
saying in words and in images,
this was.  This happened.  This
was a life lived by a child, this
was what we did, what we saw,
what we studied, cared about, lost.
These were the ways we fought.  These
were our hands, our eyes.  Who
murders a twenty-five year old woman
(with her whole family)
because she took pictures?  Who
murders two hundred journalists —
more! — because they are telling
what is?  Today, Fatima, I heard
from a friend, younger
than you were, who lives
not far from where you lived.
I will not give up, she wrote. 
Every day is a struggle
not to give up.  She won’t.
You didn’t.  Do you know
what courage that compels me
to find within myself?

Day 565

The members of the team
have all been killed.  Their coach
has been killed, 
and the building 
they practiced in, shiny
floor of their gym, destroyed.
The field they played on
is nothing but stones,
charred grasses, dust.
Here’s where a goalpost
was; here was the other.
Here the goalie 
made his startling plays.
Here was the place
far from the goal
where the team’s star player
kicked hard and direct
and scored the game’s
last goal.  How
could he have known
it would be the last goal
he’d score forever?  Last
game they’d play, last time
the team would walk 
off the field
together, arms
around each other’s
shoulders, sun
setting in the distance,
turning the field
golden. Strong athletic
young bodies golden.  

Day 564

When their house was bombed
all the girl carried out 
was what she’d been holding:
A notebook.  A pen.  There she was,
still alive, her parents and siblings,
incredibly, alive, watching their house (from
the distance they stood at)
burn, collapse.  Everything
gone but the things in their hands:
A stuffed bear.  A key
(grabbed from a shelf)
that would never again
open anything.  But she
had her notebook.  She
— from the shelter
they moved to, then
another shelter, then
a tent, then a different
tent in a different place —
cherished the notebook, wrote
in it daily. Documented
displacements. Losses. 
Grief. The drones
overhead, the hunger,
the moments of laughter,
the dark conversations.  The notebook
became her friend, her sister
when, after months,
her sister was killed.
The notebook became the certainty
that she was a writer, that
writing would be
what carried her, what kept her
whole and living.

Day 563

This father is standing beside his child’s
broken body.  Just this morning
the child took his first steps, walked
and fell, stood up, fell again, stood again
and walked almost to his brother.
Now his body is shattered, open wounds
on his legs that had only this morning
found their strength.  Now he lies
in a hospital bed, his father waiting to see
if a surgeon can put these legs
back together.  The pain medication
isn’t enough:  he’s been crying,
but now he’s quiet, his eyes
open, he’s staring up
at the lights on the hospital ceiling.
At his father’s face. At the surgeon,
showing his father the x-rays,
telling him how he will try
to rejoin bone to bone, muscle
to muscle, so the boy will begin,
one day again, perhaps not long
from now, to stand.  To walk
all the way to his brother.