Day 961

for Osama Mallouh, one year old

Are you sleeping now
somewhere in the afterlife
between your mother and father,
who were also killed? An airstrike,
Nuseirat. Do you turn
to your father there and show him
your head wound, your
stopped heart? And ask
(in the speech
of the afterlife) Why?
Do you wonder
what it would have been like
to go to school? To laugh
with friends? To run with them
across a field? Do you think
how fine it would have been
to have long legs, arms
strong enough to lift
a stone, a carton
of food, a child
older than you
ever got to be? To have words
you could speak and write
like your cousins,
so you could tell everyone
what you felt, what you thought?
How could you have disappeared
into the afterlife
without leaving a story? A footprint? A cry?