Day 1,123

Sixty-eight million tons of rubble
lie over your land.
The breath of your children, your grandparents,
teachers, doctors, farm workers,
preparers of food. Sixty-eight million
tons of waste: walls, ceilings, floors.
Weddings. Births. Funerals. First days
at school. First words. First steps.
You look out to where there were fields,
orchards, planted rows of vegetables:
everything gray. Everything jagged.
Everything covered and hidden.
Sixty-eight million tons
that had been cities, hospitals,
schools. Cafés where people met
to speak of the days they lived,
the books they read, the work
they did. Sixty-eight million tons
of everything that had been built
over the years, over the ages,
built with love, reverence, care.
You stand looking out at the grayness.
You imagine the world stirring beneath
what you see. One day, you tell
your daughter, standing beside you,
this will be cleared. We will work
to clear it, to bring what is beneath this
back to life.

Day 1,122

from a photograph

Behind the small child
sitting alone on a pile
of debris, a dog. A light brown
dog, shepherd-like. The dog
looks gentle. Young. The child,
too, is young: maybe
two-and-a half. Maybe
three. They might
have come into this genocide
at the same time.
No adults around,
no one but a child
who looks as though
he could be lost, and a dog
who also looks lost. Both
look hungry. Both
look tired, as though
they’d been walking
aimlessly about, maybe
looking for food, maybe
looking for anyone
they used to know.
Did the dog belong
to a family? Was she
loved, fed, sheltered?
Played with? Did she,
after this photograph
was taken, move closer
to the child, lie down,
sigh deeply the way dogs do,
offer some unthreatening gesture
of friendship? Protection?

Day 1,121

Bring me a sunflower
your grandmother said to you
shortly before she died. There
in the tent, in the rainy encampment,
rivulets of sewage and rainwater
flowing past where she lay,
sick, unable to walk, in her final
days. Bring me a sunflower
she repeated, as though
you were living again
in the house by the fields in Khan Younis
where she and your grandfather,
all their lives, grew strawberries,
oranges, dates, grapes. A sunflower:
bright like the sun. Like
daylight after a tortured
night. A countenance
that would smile on her. A
remembered embrace. A
kind of paradise. Its tall
stem, its petals
revolving around a center
composed of thousands of tiny
single flowers. A world
of flowers, a world
like the world she’d
lost. A flowered world
she could lose herself in,
lose her dying in, forget
for a moment the bombs,
the drones, the starvation.
Bring me a sunflower:
as though she had no other
language remaining. No other desire.

Day 1,120

She had been sitting
in her mother’s lap
when the gunfire came
that murdered her. What
safer place? Her
mother’s lap. Refuge
and shelter and home.
She had heard the noises.
She was afraid. She
was eight years old.
Her mother held her,
spoke to her softly,
comforted her, reassured her
this death was coming for others,
but not for her. Who
were the others? Her friends?
Her friends’ families? The child
buried her face
in her mother’s
lap, whispered her questions
into the warm, dark folds
of her mother’s clothes,
close to the womb
she was born from.
That’s how she died:
close to where she was held,
to where she was carried
before she came into this world.
Before she knew to be afraid.

Day 1,119

For Tahani Shalalfeh

Their sister was six years old.
They are bending over her body,
which someone has wrapped
in a blanket. The two
small boys — one
older, one younger
than she was — are laying flowers
on their sister
and saying goodbye.
Probably they had been playing
together just before
she was killed. Possibly
they had squabbled
over some toy, some
morsel of food, something
she had that one of them
wanted. Now they are crying.
Now, through their tears,
they are saying her name
over and over, as though
they could wake her.

Day 1,118

You dream a horse
has come to you
where you live in the tent camp.
A large horse, a horse
the mahogany brown
of a treetrunk. A nose
soft as velvet, soft
as what you recall
of your mother’s touch.
You dream a horse. In the dark
interrupted by the buzz
of drones, you dream
his breathing. In the windy tent,
the tent with flaps
that don’t close, with a floor
that floods in the rain,
you dream a horse
who can carry you
on his back: not
to some faraway land,
but to a time you remember.
A time before genocide.
A time when your mother
was still alive. When
your house was a place
you counted on.
Over the broken land
he goes, your hands
gripping his mane, hair
flying behind you.
He promises you can ride him
all the way home to those
happier times. And,
in the dream, you believe him.

Day 1,117

Had you lived in another place.
Had you been able
to stay in your home.
Had you had access to better food,
uncontaminated water, the kind
of medical care available
just miles away. Had you had
all these things and now
been diagnosed with a tumor,
your body might be strong enough
to sustain itself, to endure
surgery, chemotherapy, radiation.
Had you been born to a mother
who herself had not
been malnourished. Had there not
been a genocide, this genocide
which makes it impossible
even to see a doctor
until it’s too late. Name the tumor
after the oppressor, name it
cruelty, sadism, deprivation.
Name it deliberate starvation.
Name it cold and unbearable heat.
Name it makeshift tents, broken
connections. Name it
explosions. Name it fire.
Name it bombings and drones.
Name it loss after loss. This
may be the last one, the one
that costs you
what you have left,
the one that will claim you,
quickly or slowly, from
the inside out.

Day 1,116

Where are the children
who used to play together
on your street? All afternoon
once the school day was over,
they’d kick balls, chase each other,
sit on the steps of the houses
eating bread and fruit. Their voices
punctuated your hours. You listened
for them through the open
windows, waited for their shouts
and songs to keep you company
as you went about the tasks
of your day. Where
have they gone? How many
are still alive? How many in tents,
how many in hospitals, how many
buried under the earth, buried
under the rubble? How big
have they grown, those
who haven’t been slaughtered?
Far from the ruined street
you lived on, you try
to count them, try
to remember their names.

Day 1,115

You wanted to be a surgeon,
to heal, with your hands and your eyes,
children who needed healing.
Now you’ve been blinded
and lost your right hand
in a bombing. How
to find another dream?
What else is it possible to do?
The genocide has stolen your friends,
stolen your brothers, stolen
your father. And now
it has stolen this! Could you still
study medicine? Could you be
a doctor who listens, examines
with one hand? Could you hear
in the voice of a small child
brought to you,
where his pain is lodged?
Every day you are thinking
of possibilities. Every day
you are looking
for other solutions. The genocide
will not take everything! you tell
your friends, your sister,
the bright autumn air,
while a new dream begins
to take shape within you.

Day 1,114

The doctor whose hands
carefully managed the instruments
that removed the bullet
from your child’s brain.
The doctor who knew
what your cousin’s illness
was, though he didn’t have
medicine to treat it.
The doctor who held
your friend’s son
and told her
he wouldn’t live, and sat
with your friend
through the night
as the child drew his last
breaths, when she
could have gone back
to where she was living.
Doctors murdered. Imprisoned.
Tortured for saving lives
the oppressor doesn’t want saved.
You are watching your child
running along the path
between tents. Barefoot.
Chasing his friends. His laughter
rings through the air.
He is alive, who well might not
have been. His doctor, long
dead, has left this legacy.