Day 1,090

The first friend of yours
who was killed — she went down
in an airstrike. Walking
to take medicine
to her grandmother. Holding
her little sister’s hand (her sister
killed too). The second one:
a bomb struck her neighborhood
while everyone was asleep.
Her bed became her grave.
Her building — turned to rubble —
a cemetery for her family.
The third friend starved
to death, her body
leaving this world
day by day, little
by little. The fourth
and the fifth
died together in a firestorm
when the place
they were sheltering in
was bombed. They’d been
studying math. They grasped
each other’s hands
at the sound
of the explosion. That’s
how their bodies
were found: so charred
they were indistinguishable
from one another.
Five friends. Girls
you had known
all your lives. Girls
who sat on a bench with you
at school, girls who laughed
and cried together. Who thought
you’d all grow old together.
Why, you ask yourself,
lying awake in the night,
why are they dead
and I, for now, still alive?

Day 1,089

What would you be doing now
if not for the genocide?
A group of teenagers
sit on the rubble — jagged
stones, broken concrete —
as day comes to its end,
talking about their lives.
One says she’d be
in medical school. Another
says he’d be farming
his grandfather’s farm:
peach trees, fig trees.
Another says she’d be married
to the boy she was planning
to marry, had he not
been killed in an airstrike.
Yet another speaks
of simpler things: she’d
be combing her sister’s
long hair, braiding it,
tying the braids with ribbons,
had her sister, who was four,
not been martyred. They sit,
watch the sun go down,
grow quiet as they look
beyond them over so many
destroyed buildings, collapsed
roofs, bombed-out gardens.
Bombed universities, bombed
hospitals, medical schools, farms.
What would their lives
have been? Who
would they be sitting with
now? What would they each
be going home to?

Day 1,088

She was sitting
beside her mother’s body.
Her mother had died overnight.
For days, her mother had not
eaten, spoken, moved.
There was talk in the tent camp
of getting her medicine; but
the hospital had no medicine
for her mother’s illness.
Only a little pain medicine, which
a neighbor put
on a cloth and held
to her lips. The child
had sat by her side
all these days. She
was the eldest, but
only eleven. What,
now, will she do
without a mother? (Her father
killed months ago.) How,
now, will she take care
of her sisters, her baby brother?

Day 1,087

for Ayub

Your mother was shot
in the head, sitting
and eating in the tent
in the displacement camp
where you would have begun
your life. A few more months
in the womb and you
would have come
into this world of raw sewage
and love, fetid smells
and the smell
of your mother’s hair.
Her breasts. Her hands.
She was shot. She was found
by relatives, in a pool
of her own blood. They
rushed her to the hospital,
still breathing, your tiny heart
still beating inside her womb.
The doctors did what they could
but they could not save her.
They delivered you, thought
they could keep you alive:
but no. You succumbed
along with your mother.
Ayub. Your parents had chosen
your name. Ayub, who never
got to breathe the air
of this world. Ayub:
you never were held
except when they carried you
to set you down in the earth.
No longer within your mother,
but lying beside her.

Day 1,086

A small child wanders
among the tents. His face
is bruised and streaked
with tears. He’s wearing
only a tattered paper diaper,
no shirt. No jacket.
An older girl walks
toward him, asks him
his name. He doesn’t
answer. His hands, too,
she notices, are bruised.
One of them bleeding.
The girl picks him up,
carries him back
to her tent. Is he too young
to know his own name?
Too frightened
to remember it?
To answer her in a way
she can understand?
Her mother will wash him,
feed him, begin,
later, asking around
for anyone who may know
who he is. What
has happened to him.
Who he might
have belonged to.

Day 1,085

A mother is stroking
her child’s hair
for the final time
before he is laid in the earth.
Brown hair. Silken. Hair
that used to cascade
over his eyes, that he
would swipe away
with a finger.
Hair that was dusty
from the dust he played in.
Hair she would brush
morning and evening
to shake out the dust,
watch it fall
like tiny brown-golden stars
on the floor of the tent.
Now she will not
use that brush again.
Now her small son
has become the last star
that has fallen.

Day 1,084

The child was sitting
in front of his tent,
making sand pies, pies
that looked like pies
he could eat. Imagining
cherries, blackberries, peaches.
Imagining he could have a whole pie
to himself, and make another
for his sister. He brought
a handful of sand
to his small mouth,
tasted it with his tongue.
Pretended it was sweet.
Sweet with sugar
they didn’t have. Sweet
with the fruit
that would have been there,
fruit he hadn’t been able
to eat for a long time,
because there was none.
Because his mother,
who might have found it
for him and his sister,
was dead. Because no one
he knew had fruit. So
he pretended. Brought
another handful of sand
to his mouth. That’s
when the quadcopter
sighted him. That’s
when the shot came:
just one. Direct
to his face. Between
his eyes. Leaving him
dead on the ground,
the sand pies intact
around him.

Day 1,083

for Majd Alkurd

By the time you arrived
at the hospital, your uncle
was dead. Killed
for sitting and drinking coffee
with friends. Killed
because he was talking,
eating bread. By the time
you arrived, others
were bending over
his body. Friends.
Neighbors. You looked
for his smile, strained
to be able to hear his voice.
But your uncle was wrapped
in a white shroud.
You touched his beard,
his forehead. His skin,
already losing the heat
of this world.
No longer the uncle
who walked with you,
who warned you not
to use the flashlight
on your phone
if you were out at night.
who welcomed guests
at family parties. Now
he’s being welcomed himself
into the company
of martyrs, the company
of the dead. Now
he will not be able
to take care of you,
nor of his own children.

Day 1,082

The girl was shot
on her first day of school.
She was wearing new clothes
distributed only days before.
Her father walked
to pick her up
and while she was telling him
about her day, about
the new friend she’d made,
about the new book
she was going to read,
the multiplication problems
she’d figured out,
the quadcopter flew over them,
targeted them while
they were walking,
murdered them both. Now
her new dress
is covered in blood.
Now the new book
she would have begun
will never be read.
Now her new friend
will wait for at school
tomorrow, wait excitedly
with all the new things
she’s wanting to tell her.
Wait and wait and then
give up waiting.

Day 1,081

The building was a time bomb.
It was only a matter
of when it would collapse.
People still went about their days.
Children shouted to one another.
Ran up and down stairs.
Mothers borrowed clothes,
shoes, anything to use
as a diaper. Their lives
were a time bomb. The city,
a time bomb. The sky
is a time bomb: no one knows
where the next explosion
will come from. The next
quadcopter. The next
decree of starvation. The next
displacement. And yet
they went on. Knowing
the building was damaged.
Knowing it had been crippled.
Knowing that, one day — one
night — what they dreaded
would happen. Knowing
the building would fall,
floor upon floor. Knowing —
because there was nowhere
else to go — the inevitable
would occur. They
would be trapped
under the weight
of one another. Of all
they had gathered. Preserved.
Their children’s bodies
flung into the air, then
dropping, like
murdered birds.