Day 630

What you miss
is the life you had.  You woke,
went to class, stopped
at a café with friends.
You came home.  You ate,
studied, turned off the light.
Your grandfather sat in the front room,
reading.  Your mother
brought him tea in a porcelain cup
painted with roses.  Your father
drew blueprints for houses
he was going to design.  Your brothers
squabbled; you asked them
to be quiet, you were trying to sleep.
What you miss now is the sound
of their squabbling, the sound
of your grandfather calling
for more tea, your parents
saying goodnight.  Do your brothers
argue with each other
in their graves, disagree
about which soccer team
should win the championship?
Do their faces that were red with blood
the last time you saw them
grow red with anger
as they continue their argument?

Day 629

You tell me you loved rainy weather
but now you can’t bear it.
When your house was destroyed
your whole family moved to a tent.  The tent
is flimsy, has a hole
in what should be the roof. Lets
the cold in.  Lets the rain in.
I am thinking about your infant,
how sometimes. when he’s sleeping,
the rain pours in and soaks him.
I am thinking of how it’s possible
to keep him warm and dry.  I think
of you, smiling at me
when I ask you that.  It’s not,
it’s not possible, you tell me,
there’s no way to keep him dry
when it’s raining on him; and warm?
I warm him with the warmth
of my body, but in the rain
my body is cold.  I think of you
now, how if we were together
I would lay my woolen shawl
over your shoulders, your
bony shoulders.  I would 
dress your infant son
in new dry clothing,
wrap his cold feet in a blanket,
rock him to sleep.  I would quench
the incessant buzz of drones,  
sweep smoke from the sky, clear the air
of the stench of death and poison.
I would hold my hand over the hole
in your tent, shield you, shelter you
at least from the rain.

Day 628

The boy said he’d go
to where the boxes of food
were being distributed.  He
was twelve:  tall, thin from months
of starvation, yet still
strong enough to walk
for a couple of hours before dawn
to reach the site;  to wait
in the heat of the summer day
until they gave him a box
for his family.  Of all
the siblings, older 
or younger, he
was the strongest.  That’s
what they’re saying
about him now, his sisters
and brothers:  that he
was the fastest, the brightest,
the one who never got sick
when the others did.  The one
who always volunteered
to lift this, carry that…The one
who would never refuse a task,
the one whose body seemed able
to withstand whatever came.  What
it couldn’t withstand
was the bullet.  His flesh,
like anyone’s, penetrable.
His brain penetrable.  What
it couldn’t withstand
was the blood
hemorrhaging inside him,
a cascading river; or the sudden
blackness, a curtain falling
once and for all
on sight, breath, everything.

Day 627

If you could take these children
back into your body, feed them
there as they were fed
when they were safe
and hidden in your womb;
if you could take them, their bird-legs,
their twig-arms, their bellies
bloated and stiff, back into the softness
of your flesh; if you could keep them
there, nourish them, shelter them
from everything that would
wound them; if you 
could let them grow there,
thrive there, take 
silent asylum; if they
could wait there and grow
instead of wasting — one
after the other — from hunger…
If they could go back
into your body 
instead of being laid now
in the hard ground, their
bodies like leaves, like feathers,
so weightless you ask yourself
if they ever cried, smiled
at you, walked this earth, spoke words? 

Day 626

They’re told the house next door 
is about to be bombed, so they go
to their oldest sister’s house.
A telephone call at her house
tells them her house
will be bombed, so they go
to an uncle’s house.  A day
passes.  Another
day.  Then his
house is slated to be bombed,
so they all go back to the family’s
house, since the house next door
has already been bombed and is
nothing now but a pile of stones.
They all stand together
in the kitchen, weary,
hungry, looking
around.  The then call comes
that this house, now, in ten
minutes, is going to be bombed.
What kind of vicious
play is this?  What
obscene dance
is being choreographed?
A pot of lentils
sits on the stove, from when
they first left, still uncooked:
someone had thought
to turn the stove off
when they first fled.  Now
they have to escape
again.  Who
will carry the pot of lentils?
Where, if anywhere, will
they cook them?

Day 625

She tries to buy flour for her family
but a bag of flour
costs too much, and there’s none
in any case at the market.
She wants to buy pain medicine for her son,
but no medicine is allowed in
so her son rocks back and forth
all day, holding his leg, whimpering
in pain.  She wants him
to have the shrapnel removed.
She wants him to run across the sand
again the way he did.  She wants him
to be able to eat the bread she wants
to bake.  She wants him to have
the surgery he needs, she wants him
to talk to her like he used to,
to tell her stories from his day.
To laugh.  How long
has it been since he
laughed, she asks herself.  She looks
over at him, holding his leg.
Rocking.  Rocking.

Day 624

The child has been in a coma
for three months.  While his mind
and his body were far
from reach, so many things
changed.  So much
was lost that wasn’t
already lost.  In the bombing
that pulled him 
into that blankness, 
his house was destroyed,
his father killed, siblings
killed, mother badly wounded.
The boy awakened, remembering
nothing.  Not the explosion,
not the fire, not the ride
to the hospital.  All of it plunged
into some dark region
of his ten-year-old being,
preserved perhaps in some
cells, some dreams, some
inscrutable reactions he’ll have
as long as he lives.  He woke.
Looked around.  Everything
in the hospital room was new.
Strange.  Frightening.  How
will we answer him now, when
he asks — his own voice
strange to him — Why,
if I’m in the hospital,
is my father not with me?

Day 623

The flowers that grew in your garden
may have seeded themselves
elsewhere, may give forth
generations — carried by winds
or insects — in some
other place.  Your garden
is gone, gone under piles
of fallen concrete, dust, of
everything that lived and breathed,
kissed, danced, blossomed,
fruited, fell in its time
from the stem, in its
full delicious juiciness.  Once this
was a place of abundance.
Once this was a piece of the earth
that gave life.  Who dares to be certain
this will not come again?  Who
will deny this
strength?  This life force? Know
that under the soil — blood-soaked
as it is, riddled
with poisons as it is —
there may well still be
millions of seeds.

Day 622

After his son the young journalist was killed
the man collapsed into his friend’s arms
and wept.  He wept, remembering the boy
who had loved nothing better
than kicking a ball down the street.
He wept remembering how he’d taught the boy
to read, to write, to love observing things.
He remembered how the boy
had been ready to study
when the genocide began
and then said instead
he was going to document
what he saw, what was happening.
He thought of his son telling stories 
of children who walked
through fire and survived. How he thought
his son was also walking,
daily, through other
varieties of fire. How
he thought to warn his son to step back,
to take care, to stop for a day, a week.
To kick a ball down the street
with a friend.  How he didn’t,
how he could never
find the right words.  How
it was not a surprise 
when he got the call
that his son had been killed
and how he knew
he could never have
stopped him.

Day 621

You lost your first child
under the rubble, shielded
(but not enough) by your womb.
For days you lay
buried there, barely
breathing, shards of your house
on top of you, crushing
your lungs, fallen
in such a way that you could
barely see
daylight and night. When
they dug you out, you
and your husband, the baby’s heart
had stopped being able to beat.
Now, after more than a year,
another child makes his way
into life within you.  Day by day
his heart beats more strongly,
his fingers and toes define themselves.
Who will he be, this child
whose growth is punctuated by bombs?
And you are weak.  Hungry.
Your child is nourishing himself
from your body, but your body
is wasting away as he
grows larger.  How
will you feed this child
when there is no food,
when even a single bag of flour
costs more than everything
you possess?