Day 664

They were waiting for their mother
to come back with food. She
had wanted to go the day before,
the day before that, but the older ones
stopped her. Better to starve all together
than lose their mother: their father
already gone, the days growing harder,
the bombs and the shooting relentless.
The hunger relentless. Was it
the little ones’ desperate crying?
The oldest boy’s ribs standing out
as though he were an x-ray of himself?
The oldest girl’s hands like stick drawings of hands? 
One day, two,
they convinced their mother
not to go. The third day they woke
and found she’d left the tent.
They waited. Waited. Noon, afternoon.
At last someone came. Told them
what had happened.

Day 663

Once he kicked a ball
all the way into the goal
from mid-field, to win the game.
His teammates thronged him,
carried him on their shoulders,
walked with him to his grandmother’s house
so they could all tell her
what a champion he was. Now
he’s so thin and weak
he can barely stand. Now
more than half of the boys on his team
are dead or have lost their legs. Now
his mother brings a thin soup
to him and his grandmother, made
from the liquid in a can of lentils,
the lentils gone. The boy
sits up, takes the soup
from the spoon his mother is holding
the way he used to do
when he was small, before
the gone field, the gone friends,
before the ball that lies untouched
in the corner of the tent.

Day 662

The dead hover in the air
like leaves, like particles
of mist. Like ghosts of fruit
from a destroyed abundant tree.
They will not be gently
laid into the earth. They will not
be covered with petals and soft dirt.
They are ripe or withered. Young fruits,
green and turgid. Buds
that should have become fruit.
Blossoms opened and never opened.
Fruits shattered, crushed, mauled,
still oozing their juices.

Day 661

Her mother comes home 
from the food distribution site
with nothing in the pot
she’s taken with her.  The child,
not yet three, wails loudly.
Her sister, who had stayed
with her, tries to hold her,
comfort her, puts her fingers
in her sister’s mouth
to offer her something —
anything! The little one
starts hitting herself, her sister,
her mother.  She’s so thin
she can barely hit, barely scream.
A neighbor from a nearby tent
walks over, offers the child
half of the small piece of bread
he’d brought back.  The child
takes the bread, 
throws it on the ground.
Her sister picks it up,
brushes it off with her hand,
gives it back.  For this one moment
the child has something to eat.

Day 660

Who will explain to this three year old
what happened to his mother,
his father, his sister?  His leg
is wrapped in a cast, his head
in a bandage.  Shrapnel
the surgeon couldn’t touch
still lodged in his brain.  What
does he understand?  What
will he remember?  
Night. An explosion. Their tent
set on fire.  His father
dismembered, recognized only
by the color of his beard.  Who
will explain to this boy, Hazem,
that they’re all gone?  Gone
with their smiles. Their words.
His sister Reem gone 
with the little victory sign
she made for the camera —
how long before? — 
with two of her fingers.  
Her little five-year-old fingers
gone.   

Day 659

She is holding her child
across her chest with one arm.
With the other arm she is shielding
her eyes:  from the photographer’s
camera?  from the sun? from her child’s
face?  Her child is dead. He
was two years old, maybe three.
His legs hang like sticks
from his torso.  She
has wrapped him in what
she was able to find: a black
plastic bag, a trash bag, a bag
you might use for leaves, weeds,
apple cores, wilted greens.
What kind of shroud for a child
who laughed, played, spoke words?
How many weeks since he ate?
How many months
since he looked at her, smiling?
What kind of burial can she give him
in poisoned ground? What words
of love and horror
will his mother speak
over his tiny ravaged corpse? 

Day 658

The seven month old
is the size of a newborn.
Her brother was shot
in the head when he went
to get food for her, for their mother.
How can we tell this story
over and over?  When
will we finally be able
to stop telling it?  The surgeon
from Ireland removes the bullet
from the boy’s brain.  The boy
sits up, hours later, in his
hospital bed.  Asks about 
his mother, his sister.
Will there be food
to nourish him, to help
him heal? He smiles
at the surgeon.  The surgeon
thinks of the cartons of formula
he tried to bring into Gaza.
Confiscated.  Thinks how
this boy, this eleven-year-old
boy, would not have been shot
if those cartons had not
been denied entry.

Day 657

Her eleven-month-old daughter
lies on her back all day, 
whimpering. Doesn’t look
directly at her  
or at her siblings.  Is not
growing, has no strength
to sit up.  Her older children
talk about Heaven, tell her
they wish a bomb 
would fall on them
and send them there, because
in Heaven there’s food.
She’s horrified of course
at the thought of her children
bombed, but hears them
cry every day and night
from hunger.  Unbearable,
she thinks, as she scrapes
the lid of a can of lentils
for one last quarter-spoonful
of anything to put
in their mouths.

Day 656

Women and men collapsing from hunger
on ruined streets.  Children of twelve
wasting away.  Who were they?
What did they love?  What
did their voices sound like?
What was the shape
of their mouths, color
of their eyes, temperature
of their hands?  Who
cherished them?  What terrors
haunted them in their sleep?
What images chased them?
What pain did they feel
as the hunger eating their bodies
proceeded, relentless, 
on its path?  When
did they close their eyes
for the last time?  What
possibilities sleep now
forever under their lids?

Day 655

A donkey roams the ruined streets.
He had been used to pulling a cart.
He’d brought his people from one place
to another, the cart behind him filled with laughter,
conversation.  Baskets of vegetables, greens.
He stood quietly in the shade at markets.
He walked quickly or slowly, according
to the terrain.  Now his people
are gone, his cart gone.  The food
he used to eat has been gone 
for months; he survives on dry weeds.
No water except when some child
carrying water to his family
sees him, sees how thin he is,
how dusty his coat, how slow
and unsteady his legs.  Lets the donkey
drink from his bucket. He roams
on cracked hooves
indistinguishable streets turned
to broken rock, hillsides
where everything is dying.
Does he sense he’s dying too?
Does he want, now, to ease himself down
wherever he can find a patch of cool grass
and close his dark eyes, begin 
to abandon his rickety body,
his ribs that stand out like coils 
beneath his brown fur? He roams.
Is there anywhere here
a patch of comforting grass?