Day 945

You lie on the floor
of your tent, trying to remember
the girls in your
third grade classroom, the day
before the genocide:
one in the corner of the front row,
her whole family murdered, her house
gone.  The girl who sat
next to her:  her brothers martyred,
the rest of them displaced,
over and over.  The two
who filled out that row:
each of them lost
a leg.  One had been
a dancer, had performed
only days before.  You lie there,
counting each one:  some
whose names you can’t
remember, some who were
your best friends.  The two
you walked home with
every day, twins
whose kitchen table was where
you all did your homework, laughed
together, ate fruit and bread.
Where are they now?  Where
is their mother, who stood
behind you at the table, gently
correcting your arithmetic?
Their faces remain
with you and disappear.
You imagine the rows, rows
of girls smiling when they saw you
come into the room.  Never again.
Never.  Never again.

Day 944

What will you do
now that everyone you loved
is gone?  Your small son
was the last to be killed.
Every day in the tent
you’d read to him, sing
to him.  Fend off cold,
hunger, rats.  Hold him
so tightly it seemed
you were always rehearsing
for the moment
that just now happened,
when Death finally
came for him, won
the battle, snatched him
out of your arms,
took him away
to his dark storage cellar.
Now there is no one
for you to protect.
No one to cry out to you
in the night
from fear or hunger,
no one to slip
a small hand into yours.

Day 943

A choir of martyrs
visits you in your sleep.
Your father, your uncles.
Your eldest brother.  His friend.
Your teacher.  The families
in the building across the street.
The orange cat your grandmother loved.
A professor you wanted to study with.
The woman who worked
at the bakery.  The baker.  The grocer.
The ten-year-old boy out looking
for firewood.  Climbing the rubble.
The choir of martyrs stands
by your side. Is there
something they
want from you? Some
are still bleeding.  Shrouded.
Silent, mostly;
though sometimes you hear
a low moaning
that seems to permeate
the walls
of your tent: A sigh.  A word
here and there.  A name.

Day 942

What will we feed this child?
This perfect newborn?
This gift, this radiant defiance
of the genocide?
His mother is so thin,
her body can’t make
the milk he needs
to stay alive.  The trucks
supposed to bring food
are held up, prevented
from coming in.  They wait
at the border, hover
like desperate birds
unable to reach their nests
where hatchlings
huddle with open mouths.
No formula.  Nothing.
Will you make sugary water
for him?  Will there even be
enough water? How will
he grow?  How will you
gather all he needs
from the nothing, the less
than nothing, you’re given?

Day 941

The child sits alone
on a concrete slab.
No one from her family
is with her.  No one alive.
She’s trying to remember
the sound of her father’s
voice, her mother
singing to her, her brothers
laughing, playing a game
on the front steps of their house –
that, too, disappeared.
Her grandmother
talking softly to her
while bending over her garden.
Why, when the buzz of a drone
is so familiar, does it feel
so hard to recall
those voices?  Why,
when now she can tell
one kind of warplane
from another, is it so
impossible to picture
the exact green-blue
of her sister’s eyes?

Day 940

…Once we had a house.
Once we had a country.
       — Mahmoud Darwish

This is your home, my child.
These shivering panels
that stand for walls.
This trembling roof:
trembling from cold? from wind?
from fear?  This near-transparent floor
caked with mud and dust, that falls
and rises with the shape
of the ground.   This
is your home: fragile,
volatile.  This
is where your mother
birthed you, where
you were conceived.
This is all we can offer
to protect you from summer
and winter.  From airstrikes
and fires.  This delicate
membrane, this jacket
of rags, of nylon. Canvas.
Paper.  This is where
the fiction of solidness
concludes.  Where we learn
how transient we are. Where
we know we can count
on nothing.

Day 939

Dr. Abu Safiya

Remember the tender care
he gave your child,
the way he spoke to her
when she was brought
to his hospital:  the gentleness
of his hands, wrapping bandages
over the wound, the place
where the bone was severed,
place where now your daughter’s leg
ends.  Remember
how he held her head,
her hands.  Remember
the words he spoke
to you, the kindness in them.
Think of this now
as the doctor grows thinner,
as the cruelty of the guards
grows more intense, as rodents
and insects infest the prison food.
As the doctor is gradually
being killed…

Day 938

Oh she is wrapped
in a shroud of blood.
Her mother is holding her.
Her mother is talking to her
as though she could hear.
This morning she woke,
ate some bread, played
on the floor with her toys.
This morning she sang,
talked about wanting
to swim in the sea.
Oh she will never, now,
swim in the sea.  She will never
pick up her little stuffed lamb
again, call it by name,
lay it to sleep
in a cardboard box.  Cover it
with a blanket.  Her blanket.
Her blanket that won’t cover her
anymore.  Oh her blood
is bleeding out, bleeding
through the white cloth
of the shroud, bleeding
onto her mother.  Staining
her mother’s clothes:  four years
of blood being pumped by her heart.
Four years of learning
all she could learn
about being alive.  Will
she be buried now
wrapped in her blood?
Will her mother release her
into the earth with only
this hood, this cape
of her blood
to comfort her child,
to keep her warm?

Day 937

He’d gone out
to collect cardboard,
cardboard for fuel, so
his family could eat.  Not
long ago, a brother of his
did the same. Came
to the same end:  killed
by a drone.  Gathering cardboard.
Their father is blind:  his sons
were his eyes.  His sons
guided him through his days.
Carried him where he
needed to go.  Held his hands.
Built fires to cook with,
fires for warmth.  Now
this child, who was nine,
is dead.  And his brother,
dead.  And the drones
hover above, seeking
their targets.  A child.
His father’s world.

Day 936

Dr. Abu Safiya

Have you seen daylight?
Can you stand?  Is your body broken
like your heart after your son
was murdered,
laid in the ground,
when you walked
— standing tall — back
into the hospital
to treat your patients?  
What food are the guards
feeding you?  Have you lost
half your weight:  the weight
of your child? More?  The weight
of all the children you treated?
How bruised is your skin?
Do you speak in silence
to your lost son?
Have you been able
to touch the earth, ever,
in all these months?  Earth
where he lies?  Ravaged earth.
Do you know that flowers
are blooming
now?  Have you heard birdsong
through the impenetrable walls
of the prison?
Breezes through high
new leaves? The voice
of anyone you love?