Day 1,123

Sixty-eight million tons of rubble
lie over your land.
The breath of your children, your grandparents,
teachers, doctors, farm workers,
preparers of food. Sixty-eight million
tons of waste: walls, ceilings, floors.
Weddings. Births. Funerals. First days
at school. First words. First steps.
You look out to where there were fields,
orchards, planted rows of vegetables:
everything gray. Everything jagged.
Everything covered and hidden.
Sixty-eight million tons
that had been cities, hospitals,
schools. Cafés where people met
to speak of the days they lived,
the books they read, the work
they did. Sixty-eight million tons
of everything that had been built
over the years, over the ages,
built with love, reverence, care.
You stand looking out at the grayness.
You imagine the world stirring beneath
what you see. One day, you tell
your daughter, standing beside you,
this will be cleared. We will work
to clear it, to bring what is beneath this
back to life.