Day 959

Child, born just before
the genocide started —
you lived through ten displacements.
You lived through the fire
in the tent encampment —
I ran, I carried you
in my arms, stood,
shielding your nose
from the smoke, the
smell of it. You lived
through starvation,
through meals
of watery rice and milk.
You lived when your cousins
were martyred, when your uncle
was martyred. Lived
when rain and wind collapsed
our tent, when a fetid moat
established itself around it,
when rats nibbled our toes.
How, child, could you
have survived all that,
only to be taken now
by death? Only to be shot
while holding your father’s hand
on a street that, moments
before, was quiet?