Day 960

Joud Muhamad al-Dweik

He’s almost as long
as the three men, walking
side by side, who carry him,
wrapped in his shroud,
the last clothing he’ll wear.
One of the men is young —
could be his brother,
his friend. He’s
looking down, head
bowed, at the body
he carries, remembering
what Joud, 13, was like
yesterday, when he was alive.
A boy. A boy who ran,
played ball, gathered wood
for his family.
Who grew, grew, in spite of
starvation, in spite of
fear, until it took
three to carry him
to the place in the earth,
where he will break down
to nothing again. Where
he will not be a tall boy
anymore, or ever
a man, a father,
a worker, but dirt
and minerals.

Day 959

Child, born just before
the genocide started —
you lived through ten displacements.
You lived through the fire
in the tent encampment —
I ran, I carried you
in my arms, stood,
shielding your nose
from the smoke, the
smell of it. You lived
through starvation,
through meals
of watery rice and milk.
You lived when your cousins
were martyred, when your uncle
was martyred. Lived
when rain and wind collapsed
our tent, when a fetid moat
established itself around it,
when rats nibbled our toes.
How, child, could you
have survived all that,
only to be taken now
by death? Only to be shot
while holding your father’s hand
on a street that, moments
before, was quiet?

Day 958

The whole building is burning.
A woman’s two arms
have been severed;
how will she lift her children
out of the flames? A toddler
someone dragged out
is screaming in pain.
In terror. Who
will tell us his name? Who
is left, of all those
who were sheltering
there, to take care
of him now? Mothers
and children, children
racing downstairs with other
children’s mothers —
trapped in the firestorm, all
ashes now. Ashes.
Indistinguishable now
from the remains
of tables and beds
and wooden floors.

Day 957

A child — you can tell
from the handwriting — has written
a name on a slab of concrete
propped up against other slabs
near the remains of a building
that was once filled
with apartments, filled
with families.  A child
has written the name
of another child.  Beneath it,
dates:  birth date
and death date.  You read the dates,
calculate.  The dead child
was seven.  Seven.  Did he die
in a bombing? Did the place
he’d lived in collapse
around him?  Did his whole
family die with him?  Or
were they saved?  Oh,
he might have died
from starvation.  From
some illness that might
have been cured if there
had been medicine.  From
a sniper’s gunshot
when he was out
in the street.  And the child
who wrote his name —
was that child a cousin?
a sister or brother? a friend?
a neighbor? a beloved classmate
from a school
that is also gone?
And is that child,
the one who wrote
name and dates
to preserve the memory,
so the child who lived
seven years would not
be wholly erased
from this world — is
that child,
about whom we
know nothing, still living?

Day 956

What would it take
to buy this child
a piece of fruit?  An orange,
a plum?  She’s five.  She’s just
come from the hospital,
aching with fever, frightened.
Her mother is carrying her
to their tent.  Weeping
because she has no money
to buy fruit for her daughter.
And if she did, where
would she get it?  It seems
so little, a piece of fruit.
Once they lived near an orchard.
Once they sat under
abundant trees
on quiet, sunny afternoons
eating fallen fruit
and fruit that was low enough
for a small child, held
in her arms, to pluck.

Day 955

If they would only
let the medicine in,
your child could get better.
She lies on her little mat,
barely moving, her body
conserving what energy
it has.  Mostly
she sleeps.  The medicine
she needs for what’s likely
pneumonia isn’t available.
Your friend the doctor
has said her body must learn
to fight the disease
itself.  Aren’t we
fighting everything
ourselves? you
ask him, your voice
weakened from worry
and sleeplessness.  Why
ask it too of a child of four?

Day 954

He had an uncle
who used to take him to the beach
to fly kites.  A young uncle,
an uncle who might have been
his older brother.  They would run
on the sand, looking out
at the endless water, their two kites
weaving and dipping, sometimes
tangled together, then pulled back
so they could untangle them, then
flying free again.  He had an uncle
who told him (one afternoon
flying his kite) that he wanted
more than anything to swim
out into that endless sea
until he could reach a place
where no one lived under occupation,
where people were as free as the gulls
who themselves dipped and wove
between their kites.  There, his uncle
had told him, he would be able
to do all the things he dreamed
of doing.  The boy now, standing
on that beach alone, wonders
whether the place his uncle went to
when he was martyred
has that same sky, those same gulls.
Whether his uncle is playing ball,
racing down vibrant streets
with his friends.  Whether his uncle’s
tall young body,
that was shattered in fragments,
has been made whole again.

Day 953

It was never a question
of permanence, the sheets
of plastic they taped together
and called a tent.  It was never
anything they thought
would need to last, would need
to serve them through winters
and summers, through deaths
and births, for more
than a little while
until the real tents
were delivered.  Until materials
were brought in past the borders
and the strong older kids
could begin rebuilding
their house.  Until
medications were let in
and their father could stop
having seizures, their grandfather’s
heart beat rhythmically
again.  Until baby formula
was allowed in
and their mother could feed
the youngest, who seemed
to be growing weaker
from hour to hour.  It
was never a situation
they thought they would need
to endure for so many months.
For so many days they lost count.

Day 952

Later the girl told her father
she’d heard one soldier
ask the other, Who
shall I kill first: the boy
or the donkey?  She’d been walking
behind the cart the donkey
was pulling; her small brother,
exhausted from walking, was
sitting on the wooden plank
of the cart their older brothers
had built.  Who? the soldier
had repeated, lifting
his weapon:  a game,
a sport.  A slow
afternoon. The girl,
terrified, hadn’t been able
to find her voice, though
her father, when told
what had happened, assured her
that was probably why
she was the only one
of the three left
alive.  The other soldier
whispered something
to the one who, now,
was pointing his weapon.
It happened so fast,
the girl told her father.
In a moment the boy
and the donkey
lay on the ground,
their blood indistinguishable.

Day 951

She was handed a bag of flesh
that weighed what her daughter weighed
before she was killed in the airstrike.
It was not so heavy: light enough to carry
in one hand while the other
held the small hand of her son.
Held it tight, in case death
was even more greedy
than they expected.  
What she didn’t know
was whether the flesh in the bag
was really her daughter’s.
Some of it, maybe.  Other pieces
likely belonged to other children.
She couldn’t bring herself to look;
and if she looked, what,
anyway, would she have found?
Not her daughter’s laugh.  Not
her tears. Not her hunger
or her fear or the song she sang
while she sat on the floor
of the tent, learning to tie her shoes.
She carried the bag of flesh
to the tent, laid it down
where the pieces of children
could listen to birdsong and voices.
The pieces of children
were quiet in the bag
that was easily mistaken
for a bag that could have held
soiled paper or moldy food.
Because of that, the mother
watched over it.  Told her small son
not to touch it. Crouched
in the dust and spoke
to the pieces of children
as though her daughter
were sitting beside her friends
in a schoolroom, as though
there were something remaining
to teach them, as though
they would stand
after a while, run out
to the yard, shout gleefully
to each other to play
some game.