Day 923

An elderly woman, frail,
thrown by a soldier
against the wall of her house.
She dies hours later:
internal injuries.  Her family
stunned.  A young man,
already dead, shot by a sniper,
stripped, lies naked
in the street in a pool
of his own blood.  A van
filled with laughing, joking Israelis
runs over his body. Again.  Again.
Crushing his silent
bones, bruising
his already open flesh.
A three-year-old
shot in a market,
a nine-year-old in her classroom.
Others killed in a café.
The weeks a litany of brutality.
A father wailing, wailing
in agony
at the murder
of his young son.  Do we wonder
at all that his cries
do not reach the enemy?

Day 922

She dreams of a horse
that can carry her
over the rubble, rise up
above it
until they arrive
at a green place, a place
with fruit trees and flowers,
a place like her grandfather’s farm
before everything happened.
She dreams of a bird
large enough, strong enough
to soar over ruined cities
with her on its back,
until they come to a place
where her school still stands,
where her friends
are alive and waiting
for her, where they shout
her name, take her hands,
pull her into their game.
She dreams of her mother
breathing, speaking,
walking with her
to the edge of the sea,
the smell of salt
mixed with the smell
of her mother’s hair.
She dreams their feet
are washed by the tide.
She dreams there are
no bombs, no drones, no warplanes.
No corpses.  No severed limbs.
Only the unending sound of the waves
coming in, receding.

Day 921

Later this soldier
will brag to his friends
how many he killed:  thin,
hungry dogs in the street,
dogs who once belonged
to someone; lost now,
abandoned, scavenging
for food.  Target practice,
the soldier thinks: practice
for when the three teenage boys
turn the corner, laughing, chatting
with one another. He shoots.
Two killed instantly.  One
collapsed in the street, heavily wounded.
The soldier saunters off, lighting
a cigarette.  A witness
picks up the living boy,
carries him, screaming, to a hospital.
Meanwhile the two others
lie still. Two boys,
thirteen and fourteen:  their blood
mingling with the blood
of the dogs, who, like
the children, had done nothing
to catch the soldier’s eye.
Had just been going
about their day.

Day 920

No bread.  No water.  No
formula for the baby.  And 
if there were formula, there
would be no water
to mix it with.   And if
there were formula
and water but no
bread, how long
would your other children
be able to keep eating?
And how then, you ask
yourself, will you keep them
alive?  The baby is crying.
She cries day and night.
Her sisters attempt
to comfort her, but comfort,
too, has run short.  Sleep,
you whisper to her, sleep.
At least if you’re
sleeping you won’t be aware
of the hunger.

Day 919

for Shuruq Abu Sukran

A photograph hung on a string
in her small tent
shows her standing, smiling.
Another time.  Now, at 25,
her legs have been lost
to the genocide, which took
her husband as well, left her alone
with her small boy
and unable ever to stand 
or leave the tent.  Someone
has brought her a large bowl
of water.  She sits, her gone legs
invisible under her long skirt,
smiling at her two year old
who’s helping her wash
his clothes.  Smiling, he holds
one end of the shirt they’re washing.
Shujaiya.  Their whole life
bombed.  Neighbors
who bring food, take the boy
outside the tent to play
with the orange soccer ball
on top of a box
behind them.  Is this
what they’ve preserved
from everything they knew?  A few
blankets, a long skirt,
an orange ball?

Day 918

for Ritaj Abdul Raouf Rihan

She carried a school bag
with notebooks,
pencils. She was strong, healthy,
even after two and a half years
of genocide.  Her father walked her
to the tent where school was being held.
She was happy to go to school again.
She wanted to learn.
They were practicing subtraction.  The teacher
read out the questions; Ritaj
wrote them down. Minuend.
Subtrahend.  Her earnest hand,
her careful writing. Her happiness,
that she knew she’d be able to calculate 
the differences.  What
would remain.  By the time
the teacher finished
reading the questions, soldiers
had burst in. Had fired their shots.
The questions all there, in neat
columns, perfectly written,
on the paper in front of Ritaj.
Her classmates looking on
in horror.  There were
no answers.  No answers.
Instead of answers, a child’s blood.
This child.  Ritaj.  Who died
with the answers all in her head.
Whose father was called,
an hour after he’d left her,
to come and pick up her body.

Day 917

for Haitham al-Masri

His mother holds up a photograph:
a thin boy in a light blue t-shirt,
looking straight at the camera,
smiling.  2024.  After a strike
on the camp in Rafah
where his family was staying,
the boy went missing; no one 
has heard from him since.  Is he
alive?  Is he languishing
somewhere, in some
detention center?  Is he
being tortured?  Does he
look anything like he looked
when the picture was taken?
Another boy who was detained,
then somehow released, tells
Haitham’s mother he heard
Haitham’s name spoken
where he himself had been imprisoned.
His name.  The one thing
that can be sure about him.
Haitham.  What 
he was called from birth.
The two syllables
his mother called out
at the last moment, the moment
before he disappeared.

Day 916 (2)

The Zionist entity heavily bombs Lebanon
   after ceasefire is declared with Iran

It looks like Gaza, the child
says, seeing the photograph
of the rubble, the fallen buildings,
the plume of smoke rising into the sky.
It looks like Gaza, she says,
watching the video of toddlers
being pulled — dead? alive? —
from under the wreckage
of their home.  But where,
she asks, are the parents?
Her voice barely audible
over the screams, the buzz
of drones in what she is watching.
This child, thousands of miles
from there:  she has learned
that Gaza, now, has become
the measure.  The standard
against which all ruins
will be compared?  The name
we must give now
to cruelty, destruction?  The image
of ravaged dreams?

Day 916

In the quiet classroom
the children were sitting
at their tables, listening
to their teacher,
when the soldiers burst in
and fired their guns.  One
child was killed: she’d
been sitting next to her friend, 
whose screams could be heard
outside the school.  They
were in third grade.
They’d been learning
multiplication.  Nine hundred
and fifteen (yesterday) times
nine months equals
how many days
of how many children
carried, then born, then
murdered?  Nine hundred
and fifteen (yesterday) times
how many moments of fear?
How many parents dead?
How many tears?  Screams?
Racing hearts?  Now
(we’re reviewing
subtraction) the class will have one
less child.  Now there will be
less laughter.  One less voice
when the teacher, some day
how many weeks from now,
tries to get them to sing.

Day 915

In the vast room filled with children
the sounds of crying 
drown out all the other sounds.
A man is announcing names
using a microphone.  The names
of these children, who have just
graduated:  some
from high school, some
from elementary school.
One after another.
All the children are orphans.
It’s a graduation
(against all odds) for children
who’ve lost their parents
to the genocide. 
Some have lost one;
many have lost both.  They
are crying with happiness
and sadness.  They are feeling
how wrong it is
not to have their parents here,
who would have been
radiant with pride,
who would have taken them
in their arms when the ceremony
was over.  Who would have been waiting
with flowers, balloons.  Whose arms
will these children
be received by now?  Who
will be there tonight
and every night after
to sit with them
before sleep, to remember
this hour?