Day 1,102

You stand
looking out at the ruins
of the city you lived in.
You try to orient yourself:
this dome, that intersection.
This road that led down
to the sea. That
collection of houses.
But all you can be sure of
is wreckage and dirt. Dirt
piled on wreckage. Could
you point to the place
where your mother would wait
for you after school? Where
she would call to you
to stop lingering, to hurry
to get to the mosque,
the market, your
grandfather’s house?
Could you point
to the café
where you told
your oldest friend
your oldest secret? Everything
buried. Everything covered.
Everything you knew
is counting on you now
not to forget.

Day 1,101

for Shaimaa Hussein

How can your brother be living
and dead at the same time?
Felled in a bombing, his pulse
stopped. They declared him
dead. Then, uncannily, a finger
started moving. It moved again.
The doctors revived him. Your mother
stood over him, weeping and talking,
crooning to him as she did
when he was a baby: he was
her baby, coming back
to life. Life? Five months
in hospitals. Surgeries.
Recoveries. Now
he’s home, walking
and eating. But is he
alive? All day he sits,
doesn’t leave the house,
doesn’t want to think
about football, studying, friends.
His life has become
a standstill, a stopped clock. An
empty bowl waiting to be filled.
A blank parenthesis
between a past he can name
and an unnamable future.

Day 1,100

Mohammed Tamous

How many did he pull
with his own hands
out of the rubble? How many
did he talk to for hours, sitting
beside collapsed buildings
where they were buried, through
rainy nights, freezing nights,
reassuring them that their legs
were numb only because
they were trapped;
that their blindness
might be temporary; that others
were sitting beside their children,
their parents, their neighbors.
How many children
without mothers or fathers
did he hold, comfort, carry
to some kind of safety?
How many mothers
whose children no one
could dig up? How many bags
of body parts did he deliver
to waiting families, bowing
his head, apologizing
that that — a bag
filled with flesh, hair, a few fingers —
was all they could gather?
And now he himself
has been killed. Killed
like so many he tried
to save. Killed
when there were others —
so many others! —
he would have gone on saving.

Day 1,099

When they pulled him
out of the rubble, he was covered
with dust and blood. His brown hair
gray with dust, as though his hours
buried beneath the remains
of his house
had aged him. Had made him a man
and not a fourteen-year-old boy.
His mother and sisters
still buried. No hope
they’d be found alive. Friends dead.
Teachers dead. The neighbors
who had been digging, digging,
pulled him out, wiped the blood
from his face, the top of his head.
The boy he was
had been crushed; a man
emerged: raging, grieving.
Now every minute of grief
fuels his rage. His rage
at what’s gone. His rage
that the genocide continues.
His rage at his missing childhood.
His rage at all
his mother and sisters
will never have. Watch
this child; see how his loss
is turned now, minute
by minute, not
to despair but resistance.

Day 1,098

The young man
had gone into the school
where the children were so excited
to be, after such
a long time. He
spoke with them, played
with them, asked them
if they were afraid.
We’re not afraid! No!
they chanted in unison.
Even though they were close
to where the soldiers were.
to the yellow line. No!
We are not afraid!
A day later the young man
was dead. Dead
with his playful laugh.
Dead with his love
for the children. Dead
with his strong hands.
Dead from the soldiers’ fire.
Dead with everything he knew.

Day 1,097

How long has it been
since you awakened
to birdsong, a sky
with a crescent moon
still not completely absorbed
into daylight? Once
you greeted the dawn,
washed your face,
stood at the doorway
to your children’s room
and, for a moment,
watched them, still
asleep, peacefully breathing?
Then you would get them up
for school. Then
you would make their breakfast,
sit at the window
watching them walk
with their little backpacks,
holding each other’s hands.
Once the day would unfold,
hour by hour, in a way
you could understand. Once
the sound of airstrikes
did not drown out
the birds, the voices
of neighbors, the sounds
of life being lived.
Once the stench of death
and raw sewage
did not obscure
the fragrance of jasmine
and spices. Once

Day 1,096

Tell me this child
is going to live. Tell me
her reading, her studying,
will bear fruit, will lead
to something in this world.
Tell me she will write poems,
stories, and people
will read them, people
will be changed by them,
people will know her name.
Tell me she’ll survive
more bombings like those
she’s already survived. Tell me
her arms and her legs
will remain intact. Her eyes
will continue seeing. Tell me
she will not die of hunger
or a sickness
that could be cured
if the medicine for it
were let in. Tell me
her will to live
will remain
as strong as the winds
that blow from the sea.
Yes, that above all! Tell me
all this as you watch her now,
running, ten years old,
her long braids flying behind her
in such a wind.

Day 1,095

For Mohammad al-Najjar

The children remember their father
playing with them, carrying them
on his shoulders, singing
silly songs to them that he made up.
Telling them stories. Telling them
not to be afraid. That one day
the genocide will end. That they
will live in a house again, plant
a garden, get a kitten. The children
believed him. They believed
their father, who was a journalist.
They believed him
because what he said and wrote
was the truth, was always
just what was happening.
What he was seeing.
And then the oppressor targeted him.
They targeted him for his truth.
They targeted him because they wanted
no one to know
the truths he told. They killed him.
And when they killed him
they cut off his head. His head!
So his children
could never look at him again.
Not even to know what happened.
Not even to say goodbye.

Day 1,094

The wheelchair you could use,
that would let you find your friends
and go to get water and visit
your uncle — it’s barred
from entry. Both your legs
were blown off
in a bombing, eight-year-old legs
that carried you everywhere,
danced to the music you loved,
climbed trees, ran holding a kite.
Two years later you’re wanting
to move like the other kids,
wanting to join them
where they’re huddled
at the edge of the tent camp.
Once you asked your mother
if your legs would grow back.
You still see the look
on her face when she answered.
For months you spoke to them
every night: your two
disappeared legs, your feet
you had just gotten
hand-me-down shoes for
from your sister, who’d
outgrown them. The shoes
sit useless in the tent: no one
to wear them. The legs
are nowhere or everywhere.
The wheelchair that would be yours
is piled in a warehouse with others:
miles away, a country away.
A life away from where you are.

Day 1,093

for Dr. Ali Tahrawi
“Am I a human being, or just scattered body pars awaiting an upcoming massacre?”

The fingers could find
a mass that had grown
under the skin. They
could palpate and tell
more or less its size, its
thickness. How soon
it would need to be
taken out. The feet
could walk for miles,
the whole length
of Gaza, run
when they needed to,
when an airstrike threatened,
when no shelter
was near. The eyes
took in everything: beauty
of the sun setting
over the sea, rising
over the orchards, lighting
the face of your child. Your beloved.
They took in ravaged fields.
trees stripped of leaves,
blood pooling on hospital floors,
maggots festering in wounds.
The liver, lungs, stomach, kidneys:
what remained for them
to take in? purify? excrete?
Like neighbors confused and scattered
in a village so filled with smoke
they could not find each other,
they waited, useless and confused,
for the final end to come,
the end of endings. Massacre. Blackout.