Day 968

They are going to see
their parents, who are
under the earth. The smaller one
holds her sister’s hand. Behind them,
their grandmother walks: she
has lost her daughter, they
have lost their mother. Their mother
and father lie quietly
in their graves. They
will not speak to their
children, will not embrace
them when they see them
approach. The smaller child
asks her sister if she thinks
their parents can hear the drones,
the warplanes, from under
the ground where they’re
living now. Her sister
doesn’t reply. She’s trying
to remember her mother’s face
when she smiled, her father’s voice
when he sang. The smaller one
doesn’t remember at all. For
the rest of her life, her mother
and father will be these mounds
of earth and stones, these wooden
markers with handwritten names
under a sky that’s clear, then menacing.