Day 1,005

Dr. Abu Safiya again

Another day in solitary,
in the windowless cell
where they’re holding you.
Alone, you’re surroundedr
by memories of your patients:
The girl whose arms
were blown to pieces, fragments
of bone and flesh strewn
through the rubble.
Where did they go,
she'd kept asking you.
The boy whose brain
extruded from his skull,
his fixed stare, the button on his jeans
still perfectly fastened.
The starved Infants, the ones
who died being carried
to the hospital, who died in the night,
who died while you’d been
placing their feeding tubes.
You cannot stop seeing them, cannot stop thinking how you might
still have saved them.
They circle you in your airless cell,
cry out to you when
you try to sleep. One — a teenage girl — places her ghost-hand on yours.
There's nothing to do
for us now, she whispers
to you in a voice hoarse
from screaming. Save yourself. Save yourself, Doctor. Every day there will be
others who need you.