Day 1,087

for Ayub

Your mother was shot
in the head, sitting
and eating in the tent
in the displacement camp
where you would have begun
your life. A few more months
in the womb and you
would have come
into this world of raw sewage
and love, fetid smells
and the smell
of your mother’s hair.
Her breasts. Her hands.
She was shot. She was found
by relatives, in a pool
of her own blood. They
rushed her to the hospital,
still breathing, your tiny heart
still beating inside her womb.
The doctors did what they could
but they could not save her.
They delivered you, thought
they could keep you alive:
but no. You succumbed
along with your mother.
Ayub. Your parents had chosen
your name. Ayub, who never
got to breathe the air
of this world. Ayub:
you never were held
except when they carried you
to set you down in the earth.
No longer within your mother,
but lying beside her.