Day 997

They were playing
in front of their tent.
They were walking
to get water, to get
to school, to get food
for their grandmother, their
baby sister, the old man
in the tent next to theirs
who’d had both his legs blown off
in a bombing. They were sitting
in their classroom. They were singing.
They were on their way
to their uncle’s. To a stand
someone had set up
to cut hair. To a place
where maybe there was
enough water to wash
their clothes. They
were playing on a beach.
They were watching the tide
roll in and out. They were
trying to build something
like a house, but the walls
kept slipping, falling,
crumbling, kept being swept
away into the sea. Still,
they kept shaping it. Supporting
it. Fortifying it
with rocks and reeds. That’s
how their mothers
found them, rocks and reeds
lying beside their bodies, their small
dead determined hands
still covered in sand.