Day 1,022

Girl, what more
can they take away from you?
You’re fourteen. Your
parents gone. Sisters
gone. Your leg
gone. All the running you loved,
all the dancing:
gone. You sit in the tent
with your aunt, watch her
boil water for rice and lentils.
Watch your small cousins
play with a ball.
You pick up a pencil,
a torn piece of paper; you
begin sketching them.
You draw; erase;
render their movement
better this time than the last.
Outside the tent, a shaft of sunlight
illumines the fetid ground;
makes it seem, for a moment,
golden. Welcoming. There is still
beauty, you tell yourself. Still
reason to keep on going.

Day 1,021

Ayhem

The boy, 13, went to the market
to buy what he could
for his family. When
he returned, his whole
family — parents, siblings —
had been killed.
Instead of being received
with happy smiles for the
peaches, the zucchini,
he was met by shrouds:
some of them small.
His youngest sister?
Which was his mother?
Which was his father?
Confused, in shock, the boy
looked around. People
had gathered. Were standing
around him, behind him,
their hands on his head,
his back, his shoulders.
Who will eat these fruits
and vegetables now? he
was thinking, and
how is it
that I’m the only one alive?

Day 1,020

This is a record
of how they were killed:
He was standing on the roof of his house.
(His house was still standing.)
She was bringing a bucket of water
to her grandmother’s tent, next to hers.
She was sitting in her tent, reading a book
she’d read twenty times before,
the one book she had. He
was combing his younger brother’s hair.
He was climbing a tree barren of leaves
to see if he could see his father
walking back from where
he had gone for food. He
was taking his first steps
across from his uncle, his one
surviving relative. She
was doing arithmetic homework,
assigned by her teacher
who had been teaching children
in a tent, with workbooks
she made herself. The child
was subtracting two-digit numbers
from other two-digit numbers
when suddenly she was shot
in the neck. Then she herself
had to be subtracted from the group
who met in the teacher’s
tent later that day. Count
the hours, the minutes. Count the children.
Count the bullets.

Day 1,019

For Mira: still alive, doing well, medically evacuated, on the long road to healing
With gratitude to Dr Mimi Syed

She was playing by herself
on the morning
of her older sister’s birthday.
Mira, then four. Her parents
were trying to make a cake.
They were going to celebrate
though it was in the middle
of a genocide. Though
they had been displaced.
Though they were living
in a tent and not in a house.
Four. Playing just outside the tent
by herself. Thinking
about the sweet cake
they would eat, the songs
they would sing to her sister.
That’s when the quadcopter
began hovering over her
like a bird of prey. That’s
when it stopped, took aim,
like a hawk, a vulture.
ready to kill. To consume.
That’s when the bullet
sent by the soldier
nowhere in sight
lodged in her brain.
Mira. Four years old.
That’s when she fell.
Miraculously, still
breathing. That’s
when everything
went blank: no more
birthday cake. No more songs.

Day 1,018

The child is paralyzed
who had been standing
in front of her tent. A bullet
to her neck, precisely
in a place where it can’t be
removed; lodged there
to do its nerve-deadening work
every minute of every day
for the rest of her life.
One bullet the length
of a finger. One bullet
fired by a soldier
five or six years older
than this girl, who grew up
playing video games. Targeting
what he wanted to target.
Practicing. Getting his aim
just right. Never mind
that this time it was a girl
who loved running. Loved
swimming. Loved
doing cartwheels. Loved walking
out to the sea, standing there
feeling small waves
come in from a place
beyond the horizon. A place
where things might
be different.

Day 1,017

from a photograph

He is one
of the lucky ones.
He lies in a hospital bed,
both his arms bandaged
but still attached to his body.
His legs still there, his skull
intact. His eyes open.
What happened to his arms
we don’t know: sniper?
Explosion? A quadcopter
hovering, firing twice
but missing its mark,
which was likely
the child’s brain or his neck?
He is, for today, one
If the damage stops here
he’ll recover, be able
to use his arms
to play ball, climb trees.
Build. Paint. Write.
One day maybe carry
his own child. If
the damage stops here.
If the genocide
stops now. If the hospital
isn’t bombed. If the soldier
who held the remote
for the quadcopter
doesn’t decide to try it again,
this time
with more accuracy.

Day 1,016

Asem’s niece and nephew

Two children
laid in one grave. Brother
and sister, the only children
of their parents. Murdered
by some soldier
because they were there.
Because they were Gazan.
Because they were living
on this earth. Two children laid
together in a small grave
because there were too many
other dead. No room in the ground
for them to be buried
separately. Two children
who came from the same womb,
who played together
all the time, who knew
one another better
than anyone, better sometimes
than their parents. Now
their parents have no children.
Now the children
will never be apart. Now
their bones will mingle
as they disintegrate, as
they become soil and minerals,
as though they came
from a single body.

Day 1,015

They hand you a bag
with what they tell you
are your son’s remains.
You carry it for a while.
Feel its weight. Then dare
to look inside: a human skull.
Some fragments of bone.
Your son was tall; he’d grown
taller than you. His bones
were long — not
these shards. His face
smiling or grieving or
thoughtful. You take
the bag to your tent,
tenderly lay it down
in the place where he
used to sleep. You
can’t know — there’s
no way of knowing —
if this is your son. But it’s
some mother’s son, you
tell yourself. And
you promise yourself
to take care of whoever it is,
as you hope some other mother
whose son was also killed
will take care of yours
if that’s who she’s given.

Day 1,014

for Sami, three years old, WCNSF*

All his life now
he will attempt to recall
what it had been like
until that moment
when everything changed:
a summer night,
he and his older sister asleep,
his parents asleep.
Then the explosion.
All his life he will try
to picture his sister’s face,
to hear her voice, to think
of the game they’d been playing
the night before. To feel
the touch of his mother’s hand
on his face, smoothing his hair,
her mouth kissing his forehead.
To evoke what it was
to sit on his father’s shoulders,
imagine the conversations
they’d had as he rode —
so high! — past the rubble.
All his life he will feel
the things that had happened
without being named, without
being archived: like a rain
that falls unnoted at night,
yet leaves the air with its scent,
or the sound of a chord
that lingers with the hearer
after the strings
have been plucked; but the music
has ended, the song
disappeared, unable
to be reconstructed.

*WCNSF is the tragic designation given during the genocide to wounded children who are the sole survivors of their families: Wounded Child, No Surviving Family.

Day 1,013

Where is your sister?
Did her body explode in fragments
when a bomb projected her
into the air? Did she lie
buried under the rubble
of your house for hours,
even days, before
her breath stopped
for the last time?
Does the rubble
still cover her?
Is she flesh or skeleton?
Did someone throw her
into a mass grave? An
unmarked grave? A grave
with a number instead
of a name? Did soldiers
find her, shackle her, drag her
into their vehicle, throw her
into a prison cell, where
she crouches now in a
cramped space, with rotten
food, filthy water? Where
is the sister who sang
to you, whispered to you
the names
of her crushes, drew
portraits of everyone
she loved? How, without
knowing whether she’s
dead or alive, can you
know how to grieve her?