Day 975

He looks at his hands.
Hands that are bruised, broken,
fingers fractured, deformed, blood
still streaming down
to his wrists from the latest
beating. Hands
that are shackled,
hands chained for hours
behind his back.
Once these hands
probed gently
into the living organs of children
to locate the wound, the infection,
the tumor. Once
these hands held the hands
of mothers, fathers, anxiously
waiting to learn an outcome,
a diagnosis. Once these hands
were tender and strong,
able to find the place
that needed them, sometimes even
lacking x-rays, scans. Once
they held their own wisdom.
Once they were warm and whole,
were instruments of repair.

Day 974

This mother was nursing her infant
with the thin, bluish milk
of famine. This mother
was feeding her two-year-old
watery soup, some slices
of carrot drifting among
a few beans. This mother
was walking toward her tent
when the bomb fell
on the hard ground
she stepped on, her legs
blown across the field,
the wood she’d been carrying
scattered. Her children
waiting: hungry, frightened.
This mother was sick
with an illness that could have been
cured, had there been
medicine. Her children
sat on the floor of the tent
around her for days, watching her
cough, holding wet cloths
to her forehead
to soothe the fever. Now
her body is cold. Now
there’s nothing more
they can do for her.
The oldest one covers
her mother’s face
with the blanket stained
with blood from her lungs.
Steps outside for a moment,
holds the tent’s flap open
so the night air, foul though it is,
can start to mitigate
the smell of death.

Day 973

In the middle of what
was a street
in the middle of what
was a city
a boy and a dog
and a skinny donkey
stand, looking
around. As though
they’d just awakened
from a long sleep.
As though
they’d been dropped
by some large fabled bird
into a time and a place
they’d never known,
never been told of.
Have they walked,
all three, from
a ruined farm?
Have they found
each other
along the way, three
lost survivors,
and stuck together,
foraging for food,
sharing whatever
they’ve found?
Are they searching
for someone
who knows them?
Is there anyone
alive anymore who
knows them?

Day 972

All the rest of her life
she’ll remember
the night before it happened:
an ordinary night. Soup
for dinner, the same soup
they’d been having for months.
A little bread. Two oranges
they’d opened and pulled out
the slices: one slice
for each of the family
around the table. They
had a table. They had
dishes and cups. They had
more than most, and
they knew it. All the rest
of her life she’ll remember
the game they played
after dinner, the walk outside
just before bed, since
the evening was mild.
The moon nearly
still full, though
beginning to wane; its light
between branches of trees
that still stood. And then
the bombing: everything
changed. Around her,
nothing but fallen
walls, blood, bits
of flesh. Flesh of her
parents, her brothers, her sisters.
Nine years old
and the only survivor.
Everyone dead. Everyone
silenced. No one, no one.
No one to hear her cries.

Day 971

The children are scavenging
for food. Once they had parents
who fed them. Now
they’re managing on their own,
two boys, not even teenagers.
One finds wild dandelions
they can make soup with
if they have enough water.
The other finds a kind of grass
they’ve learned doesn’t taste
too bitter. A girl,
also scavenging, offers them
mint, wild oregano,
a couple of strawberries.
They trade her some of the dandelions.
It’s summer. This could have been
a game, an excursion. Something
they did for fun on a warm afternoon.
They carry their food in a cloth bag
back to their tent, gathering wood
on their way. Carefully watching
the sky, the ground, the bushes beside them.

Day 970

The girls, eight or nine,
are sitting on rocks
outside one of their tents.
If they were at school,
they’d be having this conversation
on benches, interrupted
by shouts of other kids
racing across the yard.
They’re numbering their losses:
an aunt, two uncles, seven cousins.
This one by fire, this one
by drone, these from starvation.
They’re asking each other,
Which would you rather
have amputated? An arm or a leg?
Go deaf or go blind? Never see
your father again or your brother?
They’re practicing tragedy
by naming it, bastioning themselves
against what they know
could happen. They sit talking
calmly, as though imagining
what it would be like to misplace
books or old toys or dresses
they like, things already gone.
Things, in another time,
they would have shed tears about.

Day 969

Your child was two
when they bombed the hospital
you’d brought her to
when she had a fever
that wouldn’t relent.
The doctors gave her fluids,
whatever medicines
they could find. No
antibiotics available,
not much even for pain;
they did what they could.
She slept. Even ate
a little. Was beginning
to sit up, even
to say a few words
to you when you left
your other children
to come to her bedside.
Despite all, she
was recovering. She
would be playing now,
perhaps, with her siblings.
Asking for oranges, which
she loved. Talking
about the nurse she liked
at the hospital, who,
holding a cool cloth
to your child’s forehead,
was murdered beside her.

Day 968

They are going to see
their parents, who are
under the earth. The smaller one
holds her sister’s hand. Behind them,
their grandmother walks: she
has lost her daughter, they
have lost their mother. Their mother
and father lie quietly
in their graves. They
will not speak to their
children, will not embrace
them when they see them
approach. The smaller child
asks her sister if she thinks
their parents can hear the drones,
the warplanes, from under
the ground where they’re
living now. Her sister
doesn’t reply. She’s trying
to remember her mother’s face
when she smiled, her father’s voice
when he sang. The smaller one
doesn’t remember at all. For
the rest of her life, her mother
and father will be these mounds
of earth and stones, these wooden
markers with handwritten names
under a sky that’s clear, then menacing.

Day 967

You send her to collect wood
for a fire, so
you can warm some thin cereal
for the baby to eat.
She never comes back. Instead,
a neighbor comes
to your tent
carrying all the wood
she’d gathered, telling you
where he’d found her body.
Her strong legs that ran
out of the tent. Her strong arms
that would have brought the wood back
had it not been
for the sniper’s bullet. You send
your older son
with the neighbor
to bring back her body. For now,
the baby is crying
from hunger, more
and more intensely.
You build a fire
to warm his breakfast
with the wood that’s stained
with his sister’s blood.

Day 966

A father bends over the body
of his six-year-old daughter.
He bends and rocks, the movement
accompanying his weeping.
His child lies still. More still
than she has ever been.
Now she will never tell him again
about her day. About the birds
she saw or the wild mint
she discovered growing
in spite of everything.
Now the mint will continue
to grow and she won’t
come anymore to pick its leaves.
Now she won’t need
the shoes her cousin
passed down to her,
or the quilt
her grandmother made,
which they carried
from one displacement
to another. Now
he will never call to her
to come inside the tent
and eat the small meal
of lentils and rice
she never complained about.
Now he will speak her name
over and over and only
the empty air
will stir, undetectably, in response.