Day 1,090

The first friend of yours
who was killed — she went down
in an airstrike. Walking
to take medicine
to her grandmother. Holding
her little sister’s hand (her sister
killed too). The second one:
a bomb struck her neighborhood
while everyone was asleep.
Her bed became her grave.
Her building — turned to rubble —
a cemetery for her family.
The third friend starved
to death, her body
leaving this world
day by day, little
by little. The fourth
and the fifth
died together in a firestorm
when the place
they were sheltering in
was bombed. They’d been
studying math. They grasped
each other’s hands
at the sound
of the explosion. That’s
how their bodies
were found: so charred
they were indistinguishable
from one another.
Five friends. Girls
you had known
all your lives. Girls
who sat on a bench with you
at school, girls who laughed
and cried together. Who thought
you’d all grow old together.
Why, you ask yourself,
lying awake in the night,
why are they dead
and I, for now, still alive?