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.