Day 978

Little one, your father
bent over your body and wept,
rocked, moaned, until
they wrapped you
in a white shroud
and took you away. Now
your father will never
walk with you sitting
on his shoulders. Now
he won’t teach you
how to peel an orange, laugh
as the juices run
down your chin. Now
there are thousands of words
you’ll never speak, names
of friends you will never know.
Songs your father will never
sing to you, books
he’ll never read to you,
facts about rivers and mountains
he’ll never teach you, looking
at maps together in fading daylight.
Now when your father is asked
how many children he has,
his heart will always stumble.
He’ll take a breath
that should have been yours
and remember your eyes
looking up at his
and sigh, and subtract one.

Day 977

His father is holding
his backpack, little backpack
the boy took with him
this morning when he went
to the tent school
he loved. Little backpack,
all that remains of his
eight-year-old son.
Stained with his son’s
blood. The father
strokes the bloodstain
as though he feels
something of his son
contained there. Little backpack
filled with notebooks, pencils,
books. Arithmetic problems,
a story about a donkey
the boy never finished reading.
The father will take it
back to his tent, will open
the notebooks, study
his child’s handwriting.
Read the rest of the story
about the donkey, the ending
where the donkey is found
at last by the child
who lost him.

Day 976

The last thing she remembered
was the look in her mother’s eyes
before she set out to get water.
She’d dismissed it, weary
of seeing her mother
in so much fear, weary
of “watch out and “don’t
linger” and “come back
quickly.” Wanting to be just
a fifteen-year-old girl
chatting with friends
in the afternoon warmth.
Laughing. The last thing
she saw after the sniper’s
bullet struck
was her mother’s hand
stretched out to her, mother
who wasn’t there, who
was waiting to take
the bucket of water
when she reached the tent,
which she never reached.
Mother who’d stretch her hand
out toward her when
she’d fall, when she
was first learning to walk
and run. Mother
who’d pick her back up,
set her back
on her way. Who now
would have done anything
to see her stand again.

Day 975

He looks at his hands.
Hands that are bruised, broken,
fingers fractured, deformed, blood
still streaming down
to his wrists from the latest
beating. Hands
that are shackled,
hands chained for hours
behind his back.
Once these hands
probed gently
into the living organs of children
to locate the wound, the infection,
the tumor. Once
these hands held the hands
of mothers, fathers, anxiously
waiting to learn an outcome,
a diagnosis. Once these hands
were tender and strong,
able to find the place
that needed them, sometimes even
lacking x-rays, scans. Once
they held their own wisdom.
Once they were warm and whole,
were instruments of repair.

Day 974

This mother was nursing her infant
with the thin, bluish milk
of famine. This mother
was feeding her two-year-old
watery soup, some slices
of carrot drifting among
a few beans. This mother
was walking toward her tent
when the bomb fell
on the hard ground
she stepped on, her legs
blown across the field,
the wood she’d been carrying
scattered. Her children
waiting: hungry, frightened.
This mother was sick
with an illness that could have been
cured, had there been
medicine. Her children
sat on the floor of the tent
around her for days, watching her
cough, holding wet cloths
to her forehead
to soothe the fever. Now
her body is cold. Now
there’s nothing more
they can do for her.
The oldest one covers
her mother’s face
with the blanket stained
with blood from her lungs.
Steps outside for a moment,
holds the tent’s flap open
so the night air, foul though it is,
can start to mitigate
the smell of death.

Day 973

In the middle of what
was a street
in the middle of what
was a city
a boy and a dog
and a skinny donkey
stand, looking
around. As though
they’d just awakened
from a long sleep.
As though
they’d been dropped
by some large fabled bird
into a time and a place
they’d never known,
never been told of.
Have they walked,
all three, from
a ruined farm?
Have they found
each other
along the way, three
lost survivors,
and stuck together,
foraging for food,
sharing whatever
they’ve found?
Are they searching
for someone
who knows them?
Is there anyone
alive anymore who
knows them?

Day 972

All the rest of her life
she’ll remember
the night before it happened:
an ordinary night. Soup
for dinner, the same soup
they’d been having for months.
A little bread. Two oranges
they’d opened and pulled out
the slices: one slice
for each of the family
around the table. They
had a table. They had
dishes and cups. They had
more than most, and
they knew it. All the rest
of her life she’ll remember
the game they played
after dinner, the walk outside
just before bed, since
the evening was mild.
The moon nearly
still full, though
beginning to wane; its light
between branches of trees
that still stood. And then
the bombing: everything
changed. Around her,
nothing but fallen
walls, blood, bits
of flesh. Flesh of her
parents, her brothers, her sisters.
Nine years old
and the only survivor.
Everyone dead. Everyone
silenced. No one, no one.
No one to hear her cries.

Day 971

The children are scavenging
for food. Once they had parents
who fed them. Now
they’re managing on their own,
two boys, not even teenagers.
One finds wild dandelions
they can make soup with
if they have enough water.
The other finds a kind of grass
they’ve learned doesn’t taste
too bitter. A girl,
also scavenging, offers them
mint, wild oregano,
a couple of strawberries.
They trade her some of the dandelions.
It’s summer. This could have been
a game, an excursion. Something
they did for fun on a warm afternoon.
They carry their food in a cloth bag
back to their tent, gathering wood
on their way. Carefully watching
the sky, the ground, the bushes beside them.

Day 970

The girls, eight or nine,
are sitting on rocks
outside one of their tents.
If they were at school,
they’d be having this conversation
on benches, interrupted
by shouts of other kids
racing across the yard.
They’re numbering their losses:
an aunt, two uncles, seven cousins.
This one by fire, this one
by drone, these from starvation.
They’re asking each other,
Which would you rather
have amputated? An arm or a leg?
Go deaf or go blind? Never see
your father again or your brother?
They’re practicing tragedy
by naming it, bastioning themselves
against what they know
could happen. They sit talking
calmly, as though imagining
what it would be like to misplace
books or old toys or dresses
they like, things already gone.
Things, in another time,
they would have shed tears about.

Day 969

Your child was two
when they bombed the hospital
you’d brought her to
when she had a fever
that wouldn’t relent.
The doctors gave her fluids,
whatever medicines
they could find. No
antibiotics available,
not much even for pain;
they did what they could.
She slept. Even ate
a little. Was beginning
to sit up, even
to say a few words
to you when you left
your other children
to come to her bedside.
Despite all, she
was recovering. She
would be playing now,
perhaps, with her siblings.
Asking for oranges, which
she loved. Talking
about the nurse she liked
at the hospital, who,
holding a cool cloth
to your child’s forehead,
was murdered beside her.