Day 993

A grandmother sits outside her tent
on a wooden box someone
has found for her,
quietly rocking back and forth.
She is trying to count
the children and grandchildren
she has lost. Once
they lived together
in a large house, in many
apartments: the children
played together, they ate
dinner together, the adults stayed up
talking half the night
while the children slept
peacefully in their beds.
Now the house is gone,
and so many of them
are gone. The son
who was a journalist, the daughters
who were doctors. The boy
who wanted to be
a football star, the walls
of his room covered with posters.
The girl who spent hours
drawing and painting, who drew
pictures of her martyred friends
until she herself was martyred.
The grandmother counts
and loses count, starts
over again, loses count
again. Her hands
are empty, her arms empty
that held one infant
after the next. How many?
How many more?