Day 1,011

Your one-month-old
daughter was killed.
Killed. When she’d just
emerged from the womb!
Just looked deeply at you
twice, three times,
with her dark blue eyes
that might have remained
that color or turned
another. She
took you in, understood
that you were her source,
her warmth, her sustenance,
her tether to the world.
How can that tether be broken?
How can those little hands
that were only just learning to grasp
be stiff now? Unmoving?
Those perfect fingernails,
eyelashes, toenails? You
learned by heart every inch
of her body; now
that’s the only place
she’ll continue to live.
Her father martyred.
Her grandmother.
Your heart, filled with her
and emptied of her
at the same time.