Day 1,059

for Tayyem Hamdan
and Abubaker Abed

The child was three.
He was standing with others
close to a bakery. Playing,
like any child. Then
the airstrike: it killed him.
Killed him. He
was a child.
Three years old.
A child no one is talking about.
Writing about. A child
who only wanted to play.
To live. To be with his parents.
So many children murdered,
only a handful named.
A man who grew up
in his city, Deir al-Balah, writes
in anger and sorrow
that no one
seems now to be
thinking about this child.
No one marking his death
but his parents, his family,
his neighbors. Let us now
bear witness
to the brute assassination
of this little boy.
His soft cheeks. His small hands.
His voice. The words he’d just spoken.
The place he would have
grown up in, brutalized also.
Let us never forget him.
Let him not be laid
in the ravaged earth
without our notice. Let us
imagine the touch of his fingers
on his mother’s face. His mother,
who will not touch him again.