Day 1,124

She told her mother
she was going to buy bread.
Bread to have with the soup
her mother was making:
a vegetable soup, a handful
of lentils. The girl knew
there wouldn’t be enough
for her parents, her grandfather,
the two uncles who lived with them
in the tent. She knew
it would help to have bread
to stretch the meal farther,
to feed her pregnant mother,
her uncle healing from
a head wound. She was going
to buy bread. Only bread.
That’s what everyone said
at her funeral. Bread
from the woman who baked it,
sold it from a small table
outside her tent. That’s all
the girl had been doing:
walking from her tent to another.
That’s when the soldier, sitting
and smoking in a room
in some other place, caught sight
of the girl. Inhaled. Ordered
the quadcopter to position itself
above her. Exhaled. Commanded it
to fire.