Day 663

Once he kicked a ball
all the way into the goal
from mid-field, to win the game.
His teammates thronged him,
carried him on their shoulders,
walked with him to his grandmother’s house
so they could all tell her
what a champion he was. Now
he’s so thin and weak
he can barely stand. Now
more than half of the boys on his team
are dead or have lost their legs. Now
his mother brings a thin soup
to him and his grandmother, made
from the liquid in a can of lentils,
the lentils gone. The boy
sits up, takes the soup
from the spoon his mother is holding
the way he used to do
when he was small, before
the gone field, the gone friends,
before the ball that lies untouched
in the corner of the tent.