Day 1,088

She was sitting
beside her mother’s body.
Her mother had died overnight.
For days, her mother had not
eaten, spoken, moved.
There was talk in the tent camp
of getting her medicine; but
the hospital had no medicine
for her mother’s illness.
Only a little pain medicine, which
a neighbor put
on a cloth and held
to her lips. The child
had sat by her side
all these days. She
was the eldest, but
only eleven. What,
now, will she do
without a mother? (Her father
killed months ago.) How,
now, will she take care
of her sisters, her baby brother?