Day 1,094

The wheelchair you could use,
that would let you find your friends
and go to get water and visit
your uncle — it’s barred
from entry. Both your legs
were blown off
in a bombing, eight-year-old legs
that carried you everywhere,
danced to the music you loved,
climbed trees, ran holding a kite.
Two years later you’re wanting
to move like the other kids,
wanting to join them
where they’re huddled
at the edge of the tent camp.
Once you asked your mother
if your legs would grow back.
You still see the look
on her face when she answered.
For months you spoke to them
every night: your two
disappeared legs, your feet
you had just gotten
hand-me-down shoes for
from your sister, who’d
outgrown them. The shoes
sit useless in the tent: no one
to wear them. The legs
are nowhere or everywhere.
The wheelchair that would be yours
is piled in a warehouse with others:
miles away, a country away.
A life away from where you are.