Day 556

a murdered medical aid worker

When his phone was discovered
his mother found that her son
had recorded his own death.  Some
who’d accompanied him
were already dying; he knew
what would happen.  First
a video; then — when
he became too weak — only his voice.
Forgive me for the pain
this causes you, he said, and told
the story until his whole story
was finished. The phone
went on recording — video: blood 
in the field, a clear sky, grasses.
The phone kept going
til its battery ran out.  His mother
watching, listening, over and over,
Forgive me.  Thinking she heard
his last pained stammering
breaths before the only sounds
were from others, from birds 
passing randomly — some
searching for prey? — over
the field.

Day 555

The boy was getting water for his family.
Buckets nearly as large as he was,
but this was something he did
every day.  Those who saw him
wondered how he could carry them,
walk holding tight to their metal handles;
but always he was proud he never
spilled a drop.  So when the plane
let loose its bomb
right there on the road
where the boy was walking,
the first thing he thought about
was the water.  What time
did he have to think
anything?  Those
who found him were shocked
to find the two buckets
under his chest, the boy
protecting the water
until the end.  His small shattered
body soaked, his blood
staining the water red.

Day 554

A child stood on the stones
where her house had been,
looking west at the sunset,
singing a song as she watched
the sky change.  She made
her song of the names
of all her sisters and 
brothers, her uncles 
and an aunt, her grandfather’s
name and her two grandmothers
and the grandfather who had died
before she was born, whose name
she’d heard every day
from her father, his son,
whose name was also in her song.
Only her mother’s name was not
there because her mother
was still alive.  Every name
in her song was the name of one
gone:  who by bombing, who by
sniper’s bullet, who by sickness,
who by hunger, who by fire, who
by thirst.  The child was singing
a dirge, a litany of belonging,
of a family that had been whole
and hers.  She was singing it
to the sun as it melted
into the water, water streaked
blood red with its
dissolving … She was singing it
for the first silver stars
appearing, who seemed
to pulse in rhythm with the names.

Day 553

Once — not that long
ago, before everything
happened — you dreamed
of being a teacher.  You had teachers
you loved.  They encouraged you.
You listened, when they taught,
for the ways they explained
things:  this is the subject,
this, the predicate.  This
is the object. (The occupation forces
bombed the city)  You told yourself
you’d learn to explain
like that (passive tense: the teacher
was assassinated): clearly,
step by step.  You vowed
you’d speak gently
to your students, yet require
much.  You listened
to what your friends
said about teachers
they liked (the sniper
shot the child — prepositional
phrase — in the head), promised yourself
you’d do it well.  Subject
predicate object:  The bomb
obliterated the school. The teacher
taught his final class. 

Day 552

The children are running on the beach.
It’s a late afternoon in spring:
Golden light, nearly sunset,
the sky beginning to be streaked
with purple, blue.  There’s a man
doing jumping jacks
and two large dogs
racing in circles, kicking up sand
in their wild delight.  The tide
teases the children:  barefoot,
they leap over it and above it,
as though it were a great
moving rope.  Only miles
from here, warplanes
are dropping their vicious cargo.
The jumping man 
knows it.  The children
know it.  But for now,
for this moment, this beach
could be any beach, the sea
reaching this place
as it does any other.  For now
there is only this squealing, this
laughter, these joyous dogs.  These waves
moving rhythmically, predictably, in and out.

Day 551

Mira

She is standing now.  She
is beginning to walk on her own.  She’s
talking as clearly as she did 
before the bullet
lodged in her brain, this
four-year-old child shot
by a quad copter that aimed
right at her.  She’s walking
toward the doctor
who pulled her back into life
when she’d been triaged out.
The doctor who saw her react to pain
and thought, This one
might be possible to save.
So she was ferried back
into her mother’s arms, her tent,
into the air of this world, because
she still had the capacity
to feel pain. Because a doctor
believed she could save her.
Because she was strong and had
something in her that could
withstand, that could try
over and over and not
give up. (She opened her eyes,
she began to breathe.) All
she had learned
before, she’s relearning.
She stares into the astonished
tear-filled eyes
of the doctor
who saved her, and what
she says to her isn’t quite
thank you, but Look!
I painted my nails.

Day 550

In a fraction of a second
half your family is gone.
Your wife.  One
of two sons.  One
of two daughters.  As though
you’d all been looking
in a mirror, seen yourselves
reflected; and the mirror
suddenly shatters.  The children
still in their holiday clothes, the girls
with painted nails.  You open 
your eyes, look around, after someone —
a neighbor? — helps you out
from under the crushed wall
of your house.  Your living children
are walking through smoke and dust
half-blinded, dazed.  The two children
who have been killed
seem to be sleeping
under the rubble:  they don’t
make a sound; while the two
who are living have started
to whimper, to call out the names
of their sister, their brother.
To call for their mother.  You think
for a moment they’ll wake, stand.
Answer.

Day 549

from a photograph

The babies are lined up, side
by side, on a blanket
on the hospital floor.  At first glance
you think this could be a 
photograph of a daycare:
naptime, crowded but quiet
as the children sleep.  Then
you look more closely:  one of them
has a wound to the head; another
is covered so you can’t see
that his lower jaw
is missing; another is still
bleeding from his stomach.
All of them are  wearing
clothes someone dressed them in
this morning:  little striped shirts,
diapers decorated
with rows of baby ducks, pull-on  
cotton pants.  A few
have shoes.  Was this one
beginning to learn to walk?
This other one crawling?  Can
their parents, if they
have survived, remember the sound
of their cries?  Their giggles? Which,
all the rest of their lives now,
they will hear only
in memory.  And only imagine
how those small arms 
would have lengthened, where
those legs would have carried them … 

Day 548

A boy of eight or nine
is standing outside a school
where dozens of people are taking shelter.
More.  No place else to go.
Suddenly, an explosion.  The school is in flames.
The night is lit orange, the bomber planes
are still crossing the sky, having done 
what they came to do.  The boy stands,
unable to move.  He feels the heat,
hears the screams, sees people
beginning to pour out, running,
carrying children.  A man 
runs past him, two wailing children
in his arms.  He looks
at the boy, and the boy immediately
understands.  He holds out
his arms, takes the smaller child,
starts running with the father.  Where
are they going?  What will they find?
The boy looks, as he runs, into the eyes
of the child he is holding. Feels, 
in that moment, the child’s pain.
The father’s horror. Suddenly
his eight or nine years
have become a lifetime.  Whatever
boyhood was in him
is gone.  He knows 
only that he must keep running,
keep holding on tight
to this child. And he runs.  Runs.

Day 547

They were shot by snipers.
They were bombed while they slept.
Their bodies were shredded, their limbs
torn, their faces rendered
unrecognizable. They
were set on fire.  Stripped
naked, made to sit naked
on jagged rocks
in the cold, in the rain.  They
were questioned over and over,
told what to say, told
if they didn’t say it
their whole families would be murdered.
Their whole families were murdered.
Young children who played
In the street one day
lay dead the next day in the same street.
They were stabbed, kicked,
buried alive.  And yet they continued.
Yet they helped
one another.  If a family
lost its house, another family
took them in.  If a child
lost her parents, someone else
took care of her, saw her
as their own.  I am
speaking to you
as though these things
were finished, as though
they weren’t happening
now, but happened long ago.
I am telling you this
as though it were history, as though
you had asked me just now,
Tell me how we can understand
the beauty of this place
that our people rebuilt,
the goodness now
of our lives here?