Day 607

It’s raining.  The rain
penetrates your tent.  When you
were a child you loved rain,
loved the way it cleansed the air,
the sound of rain against
windows, roof.  Now
there are no windows.  No roof.
Now there is only this tent
for your whole family, pitched
in sand, rocked by wind. 
Now the rain
comes in through split seams,
through holes overuse
has made, through the flap
that has never zipped closed.
You lie, trying to sleep, in slowly
pooling water, listening
to the merciless buzz of drones
beneath the unrelenting rain.
Somewhere not far from you
an explosion pierces the night.
Whose tent? You hear screaming. 
Children, too,
screaming.  Then the buzzing
subsides, the screaming
stops. A life —
lives? — taken.  All
you can hear again now
is the sound of rain.

Day 606

There was a family
who lived in this house.
The house is abandoned now:
nothing but walls
collapsed onto other walls.
Charred doors.  Charred floorboards.
There were rooms.  There was the smell
of cooking, onions and garlic
and peppers.   There were voices
of children playing.  There
were grandparents reading
to grandchildren, a cat
who had kittens: kittens
wrestling each other
on the rug,  There were
rugs! Curtains. Lamps.
There was everything needed
to make a life.

Day 605

Dr. Hamdi al-Najjar


Her husband takes 
his last breath. He’d been
in the hospital
for a week, his brain
shot through with shrapnel.
Possibly, because he was there
when the bomb hit their house,
he knew that nine of their children
were dead. Probably,
as he lay in intensive care,
he had no idea that, Adam, his one
remaining son, had had his left arm
amputated.  He lay for a week
attempting to live, his brain
bleeding slowly into itself,
his thoughts, his memories,
bathed in blood.  At last
there was no way to fight, no way
to keep from joining his children,
no way to keep breathing: not
for his wife.  Not for Adam.
Not for the patients he’d see
and wouldn’t see. A doctor
who’d treated him and found
he’d succumbed to his wounds
told the others, grimly, Now
someone else can be taken in.
Now we have one more bed.

Day 604

A mother searches through the rubble
for her child.  What she finds
is a shoe, a red shoe
she had helped her child
slip on her foot
in the morning.  How could this shoe
be so intact, and her daughter’s body
scattered in pieces?  Little shoe
her daughter loved, little red shoe
passed down from a cousin.
Little shoe the child learned
to run in. Little shoe
that had just gotten
to the right size, the child
so proud that her feet had grown … The mother holds
the shoe, wipes it clean
with her hand, presses it
tenderly to her cheek.  Will she
keep it? Bury it?  

Day 603

I am thinking now
of the father
who held his baby’s body
after the baby’s head
was severed from his neck.
Held it.  Rocked it.  Wept.
His tears running down the small
bleeding chest. I am thinking
of how many times this father
had held his child
when the child was alive. 
How, when the child
was sleepy, he’d lay his head
on his father’s shoulder.  How
the baby would turn his head
when his father walked 
into the tent.  How important it was
to hold a hand under that head
before the baby grew strong enough
to hold it up himself.  How important
to keep it warm.  Tenderly
to wash it with what water there was.

Day 602

You waited in line all day
to get food for your children.
The smallest one — two and a half — 
came with you.  Waited.  The sun
beat down, your child
was crying.  Overhead, drones
fixed on their targets.  Two, three
people killed.  Waiting.  You waited.
You watched others being handed
boxes of food:  unclear
what was in them.  There would be
something you could feed
this child and her brothers.
You saw people, hour
after hour, walk away with boxes.
Waited.  Four hours.  Six.
You watched shadows lengthen, the sun
move westward across the sky.  At last
a man called out to the crowd
that no boxes were left.  Not
one.  Your child by then
had fallen asleep, her small face
red from the sun.  Her arms,
bone-thin, wrapped
around your shoulders.

Day 601

She walked through the wall of flame,
the flame that consumed
her mother, her father, her sister.
The child is four.  Four.  How
did she find her way through?
How did she know this was all
that could save her?  Go!  Go!  
Go, though the flames
are licking at your arms, your legs,
your face.  Walk, Hanin, as fast
as you can through these rooms
you lived in.  Go without thinking,
without crying, without
looking back.  Go
until you reach a place
where the flames subside.  Go
though your skin is burning.
Go though everyone inside
has already been devoured, is
nothing but ash and naked bone.

Day 600

Once this was a street
lined with shops, cafés, small
colorful gardens where people
sat, told one another
about their day, their work,
their children.  Once
at the end of the street
was a school.
You could hear, in early
mornings and late afternoons,
the shouts of children
racing across the yard.
Sometimes you heard them
singing, a group of them
led by their teacher.  You
still think of the songs.  Now
there’s no street, only
a corridor of gray broken rock
people have carved 
through the rubble.  Now
there’s no school, only
a memory of voices
calling to each other
in bright air as you sat
at one of the cafés
greeting your friends,
another ordinary day, sipping
strong coffee.  What
can you name now
that hasn’t disappeared?  You,
a living ghost moving
among the ghosts
of everything you knew.

Day 599

with gratitude to Dr Ezzideen Shehab


Do not look away.  However painful 
the child without arms, the child
who runs screaming from the bombed house
where everyone in her family
is burning, the child
who is only bones, the mother
who bends over the charred bodies
of her daughters and sons, attempting
to embrace them: do not
look away.  Do not turn your face
from the infants who lived for a week,
a month, then froze 
or wasted away.  Do not shrink
from the viciousness that is swallowing them. 
Fix your gaze on the darkness, the emptiness.
As long as you witness, they will not
be forgotten.  They will not have slipped
into death unnoticed.  Do not let yourself
be deterred by your own pain.  Look
longer.  Look more deeply.  If your eyes
can’t withstand it, look
with your soul.  Let your soul
make its final stand against the void. 

Day 598

Your one remaining child
lies in a hospital bed.  His body
is a charred log. You pray
every minute that he stay alive
and part of you prays
that he find a way
out of hunger, thirst, grieving.
Part of you wants to lie down
beside him, pass the strength
of your body to his,
like trees that seem to grow
from the same root.  Another 
part of you wonders
whether the death
that might soon come for him 
could take you instead, mistake
you for the one it’s
been sent to claim.