Day 590

Once this child woke
laughing at the sun
as it danced 
through shadows of leaves
on the wall of her room.
Now she has barely strength enough
to open her eyes.  Now her body
is shrinking when it ought to be
growing.  Now she forgets words
she knew, forgets songs 
she learned in her one year of school.
Now her arms are as thin
as the branches of olive trees
which themselves are only memories.
Now her legs, which carried her
through fields of flowers,
can barely move.  Now when her mother
lifts her from the place
she sleeps, it’s like lifting
a stem.  A dying branch.

Day 589

What have you found
in the rubble you’ve been
digging through?  Have you found
your grandfather’s smile — the one
that appeared only when you
or your cousins walked
into the house?  Have you found
your small brother’s
voice?  The songs
he’d sing when he lay
in his bed alone
in the early mornings?
Have you found your mother’s
hand, the hand she’d rest
on your forehead
when you had a fever,
when you’d had a difficult time
with a friend and she
wanted to soothe you?
What have you managed
to glean from all
that destruction?  All
that loss?  All those shards
of a life?  And who
have you become now,
who is digging?

Day 588

Take a photograph of this apple; it will be
the last apple you see for months.
Maybe forever?  Even dry,
even mealy, you long
to bite into it — and you long
to preserve it.  Whole.  Untouched.
So you know what an apple
looked like.  So, on days
even worse than this, you
can remember.  Once
apples grew on a tree
in your garden.  Once you could
pick them whenever you wanted,
whenever they grew ripe.  Once
you sat on soft grass
surrounded by fallen apples.
Now you have paid so much
to buy this one at a shop
with shelves nearly empty.  The last
apple.  The last day
of the last fruit.

Day 587

Her body landed on the roof
of the shop where she and her friends
bought falafel each day.  Four
girls, inseparable, their lives
intertwined since early school
days, having sworn
to each other eternal friendship.
Now one is dead, catapulted
from her bombed-out room, her
collapsed family home, to this
nearby roof.  Gone.  The three
who remain, like a table
missing a leg.  A hobbled
animal.  Three
where there used to be four.
The word “eternal” taking on
another meaning now, with one
of the girls having moved already
into her eternity, and the other three
missing her, longing for her,
staggering through the ruin
of their bounded lives.

Day 586

Give me your hand, that I may lead you
to where we might find water.
I know you are weak.  I know
you are blind now — your eyes
destroyed by shrapnel.  Give me
your hand, trust me, I know
there was a family who had
clear water, I know they will share it
with us if we go to them.  Once
we sat beside each other at school.
Once we whispered to each other
about our friends, our teachers.
Once we sat for hours and studied
together, questioned each other
before the exams, encouraged each other.
Once we dreamed of being doctors together.
Once we dreamed of raising children
who would be friends with each other
as we’ve been.  Now you
can barely walk, and I have to hold
your arm so you can walk with me.
We go slowly — we, who would race each other
to the steps of the school!  Yet
we’re both still alive, and that’s
something.  I will live my life
(as long as I have it) for both
of us.  I will do all the things
we dreamed of, and tell you
about them day after day.  For today,
we are walking to get water.  Give me
your hand.  Walk with me.

Day 585

Worms in the flour.  Insects.
They’re feeding on the last flour
we have to feed
ourselves.  We will pick them out
with our fingers, shape
the flour into loaves, eat
the last loaf of bread
and wonder if this
will be our last day, as
we have wondered
for all these days.
So what if the bread
makes us sick?  We
are sick already.  So what
if the fire we light
to bake the bread
is built from wood we’ve gathered
from shattered tables, chairs?
Is it better to get sick from eating
than not to eat at all?  Better
to die than be exiled
one more time?  Better to sleep
together, all in one tent,
should the planes of destruction
sweep over this place,
than for some of us to live
and grieve the others?

Day 584

Once this was a field
abundant with flowers.  Once
your children walked out
after school and gathered them — 
armfuls of flowers they’d bring
to the house so there could be
color, fragrance, life
opening from the bud, 
spreading wide. Now
what you have left
is the past.  Now
the older children still alive
can tell the younger ones
narratives of flowers:
how they begin
deep underground, imperceptible.
Push up through darkness.  Wetness.
Heaviness.  Almost too frail,
too slender.  Driven
by hunger, desire
for light.  Then burst
into sun, mild air,
to unfold the beauty
waiting within them. How
amid all that has been destroyed
will you remember?

Day 583

She’s no more than a stick.
A child put together by sticks.
How is her skin
stretched so taut against
those bones?  What
have her muscles, her ligaments,
gone to feed?  How is her heart
still beating?  What
do her kidneys, her liver,
have to do?  Nothing
has passed from her mouth
to her body in months
but dry grasses
and poisoned water.  
Even her voice
has starved:  the crying
you hear is her mother’s.
Death is claiming this child
not all at once, but
ounce by ounce.  Cell by cell.

Day 582

from a photograph


Their bodies are wrapped
in things they must have used 
every day: a colorful rug,
a scarf, a tablecloth,
something that looks like a curtain.
A family:  a mother and father
and three children, the youngest —
from what we can tell
by the size of the wrapping —
an infant.  They all
seem to have died together.
Maybe they all
had been sleeping together
in one room, or sitting together
(the baby surely in somebody’s
arms) around a table, eating
what little there was
to eat.  Now they all
lie together in front
of what looks like it could have been
their doorway.  You wonder,
looking at this photograph,
what it would be like
to consider each object
in your house and think,
Will this be my shroud?  Or to walk,
all the many times a day
you do, through your doorway,
and wonder, Will my blood
and the blood of my children
stain these wooden boards
my feet are treading now?

Day 581

She was only eleven
when she was chased
from her house
by a brutal mob, claiming
it was theirs.  Seventy-seven
years.  Seventy-seven years
moving from one camp, one city
to another, perpetual
refugee, having lost
home, childhood, neighborhood,
friends.  Building a house,
fleeing as the house was bombed.
Another house, another bombing.
Building and building without
end, without believing
any house would stand.  Without
losing hope.  Without
losing love.  Each house
destroyed.  Then a tent
destroyed.  Another tent.  She,
miraculously, still alive.  Eighty-eight.
Shouting back at the soldier now
from her wheelchair.  Shouting
at him that she will never
leave, never (after seventy-
seven years, at eighty-eight)|
will she abandon Gaza,
this place that belongs to her.
She, told for seventy-seven years
that she doesn’t belong.