Day 1,078

The toddler was wedged
between concrete blocks
when his building
collapsed. Wedged
between what had been
the walls of his apartment.
Wedged between each
of his parents, who
had been killed. Wedged
between fear and pain,
wedged between grief
and horror. Wedged
between the hunger
he’d known his whole life
and the knife-sharp ache
in his stomach
from the heavy blocks
that confined him. Pressed
him from either side.
Rescuers speaking to him,
trying to calm him,
trying to get him out
before his body collapsed
like the building, wedged
as he was between living
and dying.

Day 1,077

She was eight years old. Her brother,
five. They were walking,
hand in hand, to where
they could fill a bucket of water
so their mother could make breakfast.
Neither of them had shoes.
Neither of them had a jacket.
September morning, the ground
still warmed by summer. Summer air.
One star still shining in the sky:
they saw it as they walked.
A crescent moon, fading
into daylight. They walked,
the boy holding the empty bucket,
the girl holding her brother’s hand
tight, as though to keep him
from disappearing
as their father had disappeared.
Two older brothers. They were walking
to fill a bucket of water
when the drone started circling
above them. Early morning.
Someone in some room
somewhere else, sighting them.
Fixing them in his sights. Firing.
The star still shimmering
as the children’s blood
spilled over the dust.

Day 1,076

for Bairbre

When you first look at him
dancing in the street
with a group of other boys,
he looks like an ordinary kid —
seven or eight, more
graceful than most, moving
with skill and utter delight.
Then you look more closely:
the boy has no hands, no wrists,
no foot on his left leg. He’s using
his stump of a leg so deftly
you don’t think of the gone foot.
His movements are rhythmic. Seamless.
The boy is a dancer, choreographing
his every move. The gestures he makes
with his arm-stumps
let you see his invisible hands.
His hands that are somewhere
under the rubble. His foot
that exploded into the air,
burst into fragments,
flashing shards of fire,
as it perished. Perished.

Day 1,075

The small life inside you
does not have a name yet.
You are calling her Future.
You are calling her Tomorrow.
You are calling her Sun
rising over fertile fields. Sun
setting over a quiet sea.
You are calling her by the names
of everything you’ve lost:
mother, father, grandmother.
House. Books. The pot
you cooked soup in. The shoes
you wore to your wedding.
Your first child’s first
shoes. That child: his
walking. His morning smile.
You speak to this life
inside you. Sing to her.
Strengthen her with the strength
of your will. Your wanting.
Your belief that the fields
will flower again, and she
will run to you on strong
legs, holding colorful
new blossoms in her hands.

Day 1,074

They are bending
over the body
of the child
who was murdered.
Little body
shrouded in white.
Last night
she was still alive.
she was singing a song
she’d learned
on her first day
of school. Singing it
for the grownups.
Making them smile.
Making them happy,
if just for a moment.
Now those who loved her
kneel and grieve.
Now they are kissing
her forehead, her pale
cheeks. Now
they are touching
her cold hands.
They are trying
to say goodbye
and they cannot. They
are trying to let her know
how deeply they loved her
and their words
collapse into sobs
and their throats
go dry.

Day 1,073

Tell me how you rise
from the floor of the tent
where you sleep, your
arthritic knees barely able
to hold you at first. Tell me then
how you steady yourself:
no furniture in the tent,
nothing to hold on to.
Then tell me how you wash,
since there’s no water
anywhere near. Then
how you begin
making your breakfast:
how you light a fire.
How you clean a pot.
A bowl. A cup. Then
tell me how you walk out,
through the corridors
of tents, to find
a place to relieve yourself.
A long line. People talking,
children crying. Now
tell me how you continue
bearing your grief: your house.
Your garden. Your children.
Grandchildren. The sister you promised
(as she died of an illness
that could have been cured)
not to forget. How you speak her name
over and over, as though
you could wake her
from under the rubble.
Tell me how you stop the tears.
Tell me how, when you walk,
you carry the weight
of everything you’ve lost.

Day 1,072

The boy lost an eye
to a piece of shrapnel.
Now he has just one eye
that looks out at his world
of destruction, and another
that cannot see it. That,
instead, looks inward, backward,
forward. That looks
at the way it should
have been: his house
still standing. Other houses
around it, whole. Surrounded
by gardens. His friends
still gathering at the corner
of his tree-lined street,
chatting and laughing.
Waiting for him to come
(with his two bright eyes)
and walk the rest of the way
with them to school.
The eye that can’t see
the outside world
communes at night
with the other eye:
easier to talk
when they’re equal. When
neither of them
is taking in light.
It softens what that eye absorbs,
reminds it hour after hour
as darkness envelops them
that what it beholds in daylight
is temporary. Will be
redeemed. Is not the end.

Day 1,071

Her name was Wafa.
She was eight years old.
She’d just completed
her first day of school.
You can imagine
how excited she was!
School! School
that had not been happening
for three whole years! She’d awakened,
put on her best clothes,
eaten her breakfast. Sat
next to her friends.
Recited, sung, learned
a new way of multiplication.
Now all that remains of her
is a tuft of her hair. Brown,
curly. Hair she’d carefully
brushed in the morning.
A tuft of her hair, in the hand
of a neighbor. Wafa.
Eight years old.
Killed as her father
walked her home
from her school. Killed
before she got to practice
the new multiplication.
Killed before she got to play
with the new friend she’d made.
Her small body in fragments.
No way to find all of them.
No way to piece them together.
Her clean, brushed hair
held out by a neighbor
to the reporter’s camera.
The neighbor asking
the viewers Why?
Why? Why?

Day 1,070

They are holding a funeral
for children who were murdered
long ago, near the start
of the genocide. For some
who were murdered later.
Children not found, not dug up
from the rubble, not buried.
Children whose bodies
were scattered in pieces.
Children whose beds
had become their graves.
Children whose graves
were in more than one place,
whose arms were buried
far from their legs. Their feet.
Children whose names
those who loved them
speak every day. Children
who did not get to learn
multiplication, division.
Children whose deaths
were not acknowledged
because their families
were murdered with them.
Because their families
were fleeing, displaced
again and again. Because
there were too many deaths
and too much hunger
and too much sickness
and too much fear.
for the children
and for their own lives,
though it seems
they are still counted
among the living.

Day 1,069

His daughter is ten
but the size
of a child of seven.
Her bones, her muscles, her weight.
She has lost three years.
Three years of growing. Three years
of eating, drinking
cool, uncontaminated water.
Three years of school. Three years
of friendships. Three years
without her grandmother,
her cousins, her aunts.
She’s the height she was
when the genocide started.
She’s starving. Her body
doesn’t know anymore
how to make food into cells.
How to make food into hormones,
blood, a skeleton
that looks its age. How to use
the paltry food they can get —
one meal a day? often just
rice? sweets? no fruit?
no protein? — how to use it
to make her taller. Stronger.
Able to think, calculate math,
dream of her future
the way she would do
if her body were now
as it should have been.