Day 1,022

Girl, what more
can they take away from you?
You’re fourteen. Your
parents gone. Sisters
gone. Your leg
gone. All the running you loved,
all the dancing:
gone. You sit in the tent
with your aunt, watch her
boil water for rice and lentils.
Watch your small cousins
play with a ball.
You pick up a pencil,
a torn piece of paper; you
begin sketching them.
You draw; erase;
render their movement
better this time than the last.
Outside the tent, a shaft of sunlight
illumines the fetid ground;
makes it seem, for a moment,
golden. Welcoming. There is still
beauty, you tell yourself. Still
reason to keep on going.