Day 940

…Once we had a house.
Once we had a country.
       — Mahmoud Darwish

This is your home, my child.
These shivering panels
that stand for walls.
This trembling roof:
trembling from cold? from wind?
from fear?  This near-transparent floor
caked with mud and dust, that falls
and rises with the shape
of the ground.   This
is your home: fragile,
volatile.  This
is where your mother
birthed you, where
you were conceived.
This is all we can offer
to protect you from summer
and winter.  From airstrikes
and fires.  This delicate
membrane, this jacket
of rags, of nylon. Canvas.
Paper.  This is where
the fiction of solidness
concludes.  Where we learn
how transient we are. Where
we know we can count
on nothing.