Day 1,081

The building was a time bomb.
It was only a matter
of when it would collapse.
People still went about their days.
Children shouted to one another.
Ran up and down stairs.
Mothers borrowed clothes,
shoes, anything to use
as a diaper. Their lives
were a time bomb. The city,
a time bomb. The sky
is a time bomb: no one knows
where the next explosion
will come from. The next
quadcopter. The next
decree of starvation. The next
displacement. And yet
they went on. Knowing
the building was damaged.
Knowing it had been crippled.
Knowing that, one day — one
night — what they dreaded
would happen. Knowing
the building would fall,
floor upon floor. Knowing —
because there was nowhere
else to go — the inevitable
would occur. They
would be trapped
under the weight
of one another. Of all
they had gathered. Preserved.
Their children’s bodies
flung into the air, then
dropping, like
murdered birds.

Day 1,080

The building collapsed slowly,
floor by damaged floor; then
all at once. Those who were still
living inside, sheltering,
knew it could happen; but where
could they go? Families
with small children. Elders
who couldn’t walk. What else
could they do but go on living
in a building that was doomed,
in a targeted city, in a country
the oppressor was determined
to erase. Still, they went
about their days: ate
what they could, folded
their clothes
and their children’s clothes
at night. Read books. Spoke
with friends. Until
the moment they heard
a thunderous noise, stood up,
looked around, saw out the windows
the floors on top of them falling
before their own floor fell.
Windows blackened by debris
before they could get their children
safely out. Before they were buried alive
under everything they had lived with.

Day 1,079

The girl, twelve years old,
drew a sun
on a broken wall.
A wall that once
was the side of a house.
A wall that was shattered
by bombings: more than one.
She drew a sun
with a broken marker
on a broken wall. A jagged wall,
lopsided, leaning. Pieces of concrete
sharp and angled, there
on the ground. A sun.
A sun. Shining. Its rays
reaching out through exploded shards.
A sun to warm
every person who passes.
A sun to light the way
for those digging amid the rubble
to find a hand. A face. A necklace
by which they might
identify a body
long crushed. Long buried.
Long disintegrating
into the soil below.
A sun to make someone smile.
A sun, to say there is this
which can outlast genocide.

Day 1,078

The toddler was wedged
between concrete blocks
when his building
collapsed. Wedged
between what had been
the walls of his apartment.
Wedged between each
of his parents, who
had been killed. Wedged
between fear and pain,
wedged between grief
and horror. Wedged
between the hunger
he’d known his whole life
and the knife-sharp ache
in his stomach
from the heavy blocks
that confined him. Pressed
him from either side.
Rescuers speaking to him,
trying to calm him,
trying to get him out
before his body collapsed
like the building, wedged
as he was between living
and dying.

Day 1,077

She was eight years old. Her brother,
five. They were walking,
hand in hand, to where
they could fill a bucket of water
so their mother could make breakfast.
Neither of them had shoes.
Neither of them had a jacket.
September morning, the ground
still warmed by summer. Summer air.
One star still shining in the sky:
they saw it as they walked.
A crescent moon, fading
into daylight. They walked,
the boy holding the empty bucket,
the girl holding her brother’s hand
tight, as though to keep him
from disappearing
as their father had disappeared.
Two older brothers. They were walking
to fill a bucket of water
when the drone started circling
above them. Early morning.
Someone in some room
somewhere else, sighting them.
Fixing them in his sights. Firing.
The star still shimmering
as the children’s blood
spilled over the dust.

Day 1,076

for Bairbre

When you first look at him
dancing in the street
with a group of other boys,
he looks like an ordinary kid —
seven or eight, more
graceful than most, moving
with skill and utter delight.
Then you look more closely:
the boy has no hands, no wrists,
no foot on his left leg. He’s using
his stump of a leg so deftly
you don’t think of the gone foot.
His movements are rhythmic. Seamless.
The boy is a dancer, choreographing
his every move. The gestures he makes
with his arm-stumps
let you see his invisible hands.
His hands that are somewhere
under the rubble. His foot
that exploded into the air,
burst into fragments,
flashing shards of fire,
as it perished. Perished.

Day 1,075

The small life inside you
does not have a name yet.
You are calling her Future.
You are calling her Tomorrow.
You are calling her Sun
rising over fertile fields. Sun
setting over a quiet sea.
You are calling her by the names
of everything you’ve lost:
mother, father, grandmother.
House. Books. The pot
you cooked soup in. The shoes
you wore to your wedding.
Your first child’s first
shoes. That child: his
walking. His morning smile.
You speak to this life
inside you. Sing to her.
Strengthen her with the strength
of your will. Your wanting.
Your belief that the fields
will flower again, and she
will run to you on strong
legs, holding colorful
new blossoms in her hands.

Day 1,074

They are bending
over the body
of the child
who was murdered.
Little body
shrouded in white.
Last night
she was still alive.
she was singing a song
she’d learned
on her first day
of school. Singing it
for the grownups.
Making them smile.
Making them happy,
if just for a moment.
Now those who loved her
kneel and grieve.
Now they are kissing
her forehead, her pale
cheeks. Now
they are touching
her cold hands.
They are trying
to say goodbye
and they cannot. They
are trying to let her know
how deeply they loved her
and their words
collapse into sobs
and their throats
go dry.

Day 1,073

Tell me how you rise
from the floor of the tent
where you sleep, your
arthritic knees barely able
to hold you at first. Tell me then
how you steady yourself:
no furniture in the tent,
nothing to hold on to.
Then tell me how you wash,
since there’s no water
anywhere near. Then
how you begin
making your breakfast:
how you light a fire.
How you clean a pot.
A bowl. A cup. Then
tell me how you walk out,
through the corridors
of tents, to find
a place to relieve yourself.
A long line. People talking,
children crying. Now
tell me how you continue
bearing your grief: your house.
Your garden. Your children.
Grandchildren. The sister you promised
(as she died of an illness
that could have been cured)
not to forget. How you speak her name
over and over, as though
you could wake her
from under the rubble.
Tell me how you stop the tears.
Tell me how, when you walk,
you carry the weight
of everything you’ve lost.

Day 1,072

The boy lost an eye
to a piece of shrapnel.
Now he has just one eye
that looks out at his world
of destruction, and another
that cannot see it. That,
instead, looks inward, backward,
forward. That looks
at the way it should
have been: his house
still standing. Other houses
around it, whole. Surrounded
by gardens. His friends
still gathering at the corner
of his tree-lined street,
chatting and laughing.
Waiting for him to come
(with his two bright eyes)
and walk the rest of the way
with them to school.
The eye that can’t see
the outside world
communes at night
with the other eye:
easier to talk
when they’re equal. When
neither of them
is taking in light.
It softens what that eye absorbs,
reminds it hour after hour
as darkness envelops them
that what it beholds in daylight
is temporary. Will be
redeemed. Is not the end.