Day 1,069

His daughter is ten
but the size
of a child of seven.
Her bones, her muscles, her weight.
She has lost three years.
Three years of growing. Three years
of eating, drinking
cool, uncontaminated water.
Three years of school. Three years
of friendships. Three years
without her grandmother,
her cousins, her aunts.
She’s the height she was
when the genocide started.
She’s starving. Her body
doesn’t know anymore
how to make food into cells.
How to make food into hormones,
blood, a skeleton
that looks its age. How to use
the paltry food they can get —
one meal a day? often just
rice? sweets? no fruit?
no protein? — how to use it
to make her taller. Stronger.
Able to think, calculate math,
dream of her future
the way she would do
if her body were now
as it should have been.