Day 718

Where is the child Noor?
She’s five.  She’s trapped
under the rubble of the house
she’d been sheltering in
after the house she was born in
was bombed.  One escape, only
one:  the second time,
No.  Her parents
desperately search for her:
their one child.  Their
beloved Noor, whose name
means Light.  Noor,
who yesterday was laughing,
telling stories, dancing
around the room
that later collapsed
on her.  Her parents,
their neighbors, dig
and dig.  Noor, five
years old, is found:
held, kissed, taken
in an ambulance.  Her parents
beside her, with her
when she draws her last
breath, speeding,
as she dies, through
their broken city.

Day 717

Gaza City

Was this the last day
of your life?  The last
hour? No way to know.
Explosions everywhere.
Look around
at everything you love
that still remains:  your mother.
A sister.  Your two books
that you’ve carried from one
displacement to the next.
Look at the sky, the shadows
of trees, the charred grasses.
Look around at the earth
about to yield
to another autumn:  some leaves
that may mulch — whether
or not you’re here — 
into richer soil.

Day 716

Their voices are loud now,
the voices of those
whose bodies were crushed,
burned, shredded to pieces,
lost, starved, exploded,
eviscerated. Turned to dust,
merged with the dust
of the air, the ground. Their voices
are loud. Are clear. They are calling
to those they loved. To those
they never knew. They are crying out
to the oceans, the rivers, the animals.
In all the dialects of the earth
they are shouting “justice”
and “stop” and “enough”
and “a billion times more
than enough.” At times they are singing.
They are singing songs
of mourning and rage and tenderness.
Their songs thread the savaged land
with everything they will never live.
Listen. Listen. Listen.

Day 715

You wake to a quiet sky.
For a moment you try to remember
your world as it was
before: your mother
alive, your small brothers
whispering to each other
in their beds. A breeze from the sea
moves the sides of the tent
back and forth; if you close
your eyes, you can try to pretend
it’s your sisters’ breathing, still
asleep. You try to recall
how your days would unfold:
how your friends would meet you
at your door, how you’d walk with them
to school, sharing secrets, anxious
about exams. You feel the hard ground
beneath you, try to remember
cool sheets, softness
of pillows. Now, in the distance, explosions.
The sky flashes light, not from the sun.
You try not to count your dead.

Day 714

Chase the food as it falls
parachuted from the sky.
Chase it across the charred field,
chase it into the sea. It’s only
a sack of flour, a few cans
of diced chicken, but see
if you can get there
before the others.  An old man
is trying to run
with his cane, a boy
stumbles with weakness. You
pick up three cans, give each of them
one, keep one for yourself,
knowing it won’t feed your family,
knowing you’ll have to return
tomorrow. Risk one more time
the sniper’s bullet, the airdrop
falling on top of you, crushing
the bones in your body
that haven’t eroded yet.

Day 713

The two-year-old child
mortally wounded in an airstrike.
Her face black with burns.
Hours after the doctor
had been working to keep
other children alive, yet another explosion:
the doctor saw the child
brought to the hospital.  Carried
in on a stretcher.  Her face contorted
with pain, her eyes closed.  He took
his stethoscope, listened
to the heart he hoped he could work
to bring back.  Felt
its final beat.  Then nothing.
No beat.  No pulse.
What was her name? someone asked
the doctor.  No one
able to answer.  Her mother
and father and newborn brother
all dead.  Her heart
stopped. Unnamed,
unnameable, she died.
Unaccompanied
except for the doctor,
himself devastated, touching
with two fingers
the child’s cold forehead,
murmuring over and over
goodbye, I’m sorry, goodbye.

Day 712

This one plays the guitar, carries it
each time he’s displaced, teaches children
to sing.  This one promises herself
to write for two hours every day
in spite of bombings, evacuation
orders, quadcopters constantly
overhead.  This one walks,
weakened from hunger as she is,
to what’s left of the hospital,
greets the crowds of the wounded
sitting or lying in the corridors,
picks up whatever instruments
she can find, does what surgeries
she can do.  This one
gathers soil, digs with his fingers,
plants whatever he thinks
might grow.  Tends the seedlings
daily.  This one pieces together
wood and concrete, fragments
of lives, constructs a shelter
for his children.  Anything,
he is thinking, can be a tool.
Anything can be made
into roof. Wall. Table.

Day 711

Gaza City


Can you find the body
of your child?
Can you find the tree
that stood for years
outside your window?
Can you find the street
you walked every day
of your life — to school,
to work, to your children’s
school? Can you find 
the  windows, the grass, 
the cool breezes that blew
from the sea?  You are searching
for everything.  You are searching
alone, with others you never knew.
You pick up a fragment of cloth,
a stem, a broken vase.  A shattered
mirror, in which you see yourself.
Your city behind you.  Shattered. 

Day 710

Find a small space alone 
in a corner of what once
was a street you knew.  Look up
at the sky, free for a moment
of drones, planes, smoke.
Remember what used to be here:
a house your friend lived in,
a café where you used to spend hours
talking, studying.  A small restaurant
where you’d go for dinner.
Imagine it still here.  Your friend
alive, meeting you after work
with stories from her day.  The café
filling with other conversations.
Look now beyond the blasted
concrete, bulldozed buildings.
Smell the salt air, free
of the stench
of rotting flesh. Imagine
you’ve been swimming.  Sailing.
Fishing; and now, in the waning
afternoon, you’re about
to be offered coffee.  Pastries.
Imagine the killing
behind you, the city
rebuilt, the avenue cleared
all the way down to the sea.

Day 709

Where are the children
you used to see
playing in the streets?  They’d
greet you as you passed by
on your way to work
each morning, chasing each other
on their way to school, the littlest one
calling Wait, Wait for me!  Which
of them now 
is still alive?  Which
has gone to live in a tent
in the south, which
still has legs
to chase his friends with?
You hear their voices
as you walk past the remains
of their lives.  Your life.  You
see them in these shadows
of early autumn, shadows
of buildings gone, trees
gone.  Shadows not
of what’s there but what
used to be.  Do you see the ghosts
of the children
weaving in and out 
of the ruined streets?
Or are these
only the shadows
of predatory birds
eating the corpses
of everything?