Day 724

Ordered to evacuate, they did.
They took everything with them,
whatever they could:  rugs, pots,
clothes.  Piled it all
on a wagon, pulled the wagon
for miles, the littlest ones
sitting on top of the pile
of all that had been their lives.
At last they arrived, there
at the tent encampment
where their cousins were waiting.
Set up their tent.
Laid out their things.
An afternoon of joy
at seeing each other — the children
playing, shouting, chasing
each other across the dust.
An afternoon.  An evening
with scant food, but still
they sat together, eating something,
talking.  Children falling asleep
on the ground, on their father’s
lap.  An afternoon.  An evening.
By morning the bombing
had taken them all: children,
parents, belongings.  The cousins —
their tent, somehow, spared —
woke, looked incredulously
at the shredded remains.  Fragment
of a t-shirt.  Lid of a pot.

Day 723

The boy walks with his father.
He carries a white shroud in his arms
almost his own size.  Has he asked
his father if he can be the one
who carries it?  The shroud
is wrapped around the body of his cousin.
His cousin!  His beloved younger cousin.
He is carrying his cousin to his grave.
They reach the place where he will lie
forever.  The boy lays him down
so gently, as though his cousin were sleeping
and shouldn’t be awakened.
He kneels over the body, rocks
back and forth, sobbing.  We played
every day, he sobs.  You were the one
I played with every day!  His father
stands over him, helpless.  Unable
to save his son from this grief. Unable
to have saved his nephew.  The boy
rocks and sobs, rocks and sobs. Louder,
as though his words might begin to reach
over the barrier.  Across the deadened air.

Day 722

In a corner of the hospital room,
on the linoleum floor,
a mother cradles her dead child.
A year old?  A year
and some months?  His head
bleeds through his thick brown
curly hair.  She rocks him, strokes
his arm, holds him close
to her body, sobs his name
over and over.  In a bed
at the other end of the room
her husband bends over
their older child:  a girl, four or five.
He, too, is sobbing. The girl, too,
has been killed: a sniper’s bullet
to her head as well.  No! No! their father
is crying. Only this morning
the children woke, played together
in the dry dirt outside their tent.
Only this morning their skin
was warm!  You can see
on the girl’s bare feet, slowly
losing their color, upturned
on the bed, unmoving, some dirt
from the last piece of ground they’d sat on.

Day 721

He is searching for his children
under the rubble.  He’s
calling their names.  His voice
grows more and more desperate.
They’re not answering.  No sound.
No Here we are.  He turns over
this piece of broken concrete,
that one.  Nothing.  Calls
the girl’s name.  The boy’s.
Again and again.  Salma!  Saed!
Tears in his voice.  On his hands
and knees.  Salma!  Crawling.
Saed!  Then — as though
he were scolding his son
for letting Salma dart into the street — 
after the incident, everyone
safe; Salma, perhaps,
crying from being pulled
abruptly onto the sidewalk 
from a quiet, trafficless street,
by her mother — Saed!
their father is shouting — 
harshly, even more
desperately, unable now
to keep from sobbing — 
Didn’t I tell you
to take care of your sister? Didn’t
I tell you?  Didn’t I?

Day 720

The child is sent on an errand
by his father
and when he comes back,
having accomplished the errand,
his father is dead.  Exploded.
Torn to pieces.
The boy holds the phone charger
in his hand.  Its black wire
reaches the ground — that’s
how small the boy is.
An errand that took less
than five minutes.  Now
his father will never
charge his phone.
Now the phone
will always be dead.
Now his father
will be dead
for the rest
of the boy’s life.

Day 719

from a photograph

They have no parents
Their parents were killed.
The girl, nine years old,
has found a large
cardboard box
where she can put her baby sister,
who looks, in the photograph,
to be maybe seven months.
She’s sitting up. Smiling
at her sister, who leans
tenderly, worried, over
the box. The girl
has become mother,
father, protector.  And the box
has become playpen. Bed. Shelter.
Home.  It’s everything.  It’s what
the baby is contained by.  A few
paper toys her sister
has made for her.  What food
she can find to keep them both
alive.  How can this nine-year-old,
grieving as she is, frightened
as she is, take care
of a baby?  And yet
she does.  Her baby sister
and this box are all
she has.  She does
what she needs to.

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.