Day 745

Ceasefire III, Day 11 
the Abu Shaaban family

They were going home.
They’d left when they were told to.
They were together.  They
had survived.  They thought
they had survived, that now
the bombings would cease, that now
they could start to rebuild.  To redeem
what was left of their home
from mountains of waste,
from the stench of death and sewage,
from two years of loss.  Grief.  Horror.
They were going home
in a van that held them all,
all members of one family.
Suddenly: a familiar sound.
Suddenly: shots, explosions.
Everyone in the car — children,
parents, everyone — suddenly dead.
Two children’s bodies too shattered, too
fragmented, to be found:  somewhere
mixed with the rubble.  Somewhere
their blood, left to seep into
the ravaged earth.  Bodies
that moments ago were whole.
Children who had been laughing, teasing
each other, playing.  Some 
who had been looking silently
out at the road, the ruins.
Now they are part of the ruins.
Now they will never reach their home.
Now they are gone to feed the statistics.