Day 1,099

When they pulled him
out of the rubble, he was covered
with dust and blood. His brown hair
gray with dust, as though his hours
buried beneath the remains
of his house
had aged him. Had made him a man
and not a fourteen-year-old boy.
His mother and sisters
still buried. No hope
they’d be found alive. Friends dead.
Teachers dead. The neighbors
who had been digging, digging,
pulled him out, wiped the blood
from his face, the top of his head.
The boy he was
had been crushed; a man
emerged: raging, grieving.
Now every minute of grief
fuels his rage. His rage
at what’s gone. His rage
that the genocide continues.
His rage at his missing childhood.
His rage at all
his mother and sisters
will never have. Watch
this child; see how his loss
is turned now, minute
by minute, not
to despair but resistance.