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.

Day 950

A small child
found lying in the rubble,
bleeding, but alive.  A woman
picks him up, holds him,
carries him to a hospital.
She runs, heart pounding, face red
but warmed by his still warm breath.
The child is too young to speak.
No way she can learn his name.
No one around him when
she found him.  He’s examined,
treated, bandaged.  The doctors
give what medicine is there
to the woman, who already
has three children.  She
will carry him home. She
will give him the medicine.  She
will ask and ask and ask
to find his parents, grandparents,
anyone at all he might
have belonged to.  For now
he is hers. She will
give him a name.  She
will give him clean clothes.
She will wash the clothes
he’d been wearing
and wash her own clothes,
soaked in his blood.  It will be
a kind of ritual.

Day 949

You say you are going to hang us
for our resistance.  For wanting
to stay alive.  Hang us?  From
what trees?  From the olive trees,
the lemon trees you have already
destroyed?  With what
rope?  From rope made
of the hair of our sisters, our mothers?
You say you are going to hang us
for having names.  Mouths.  Ears.
For having laughter.  For having dreams.
For weeping over the deaths
of our children.  For having children.
You say you are going to hang
our strength?  Our history?  Our poetry?
You’re going to hang our longing
for freedom?  Our thirst for justice?
Go ahead, tie your cord
around our souls.  Then stand
in a pool your own foul blood
and watch us fly off like leaves
in the wind.  Watch us slip out
of the knots you have made
and hover above you
like wild birds whose wingspan
embraces the whole land
we’ve loved, our songs
of liberation echoing
through your fantasies
that you will have destroyed us.

Day 948

How many times
have you been displaced?
How many bombings
have you witnessed?
How many friends
have you lost?
How many sisters? brothers?
Uncles? Aunts? Parents?
Grandparents? Teachers?
How many days of school
have you missed?
How many pounds
have you lost?
How many arms and legs
do your friends not have anymore?
How many days
have you gone hungry?
How many nights
have you spent with rain
raining into your tent?
(Flooding it.  Bringing it down.)
How much wood
have you gathered for fuel?
How many mornings
have you awakened crying?
How many rats
have you seen in your tent?
How many pieces of flesh
of how many children like you
lie strewn on the ground?

Day 947

He wanders through the rubble
as though he’s looking
for something he lost.  Turns over
a rock, a fragment of a wall.  He’s
nine or ten, skinny; his clothes
barely fit.  His fingers
are raw from digging
through all this debris.  
There’s no one with him:
no father, no mother, no
brother, no friend.  He
does not seem to be walking
in any particular direction;
it’s possible he keeps turning over
the same gray things, finding nothing
but worms or mold or fungus,
turning them over again
as he retraces his steps.
No one to pull him away
from his senseless task.
No one to help him let go
of whatever it was
he set out to redeem.

Day 946

Where are you, older sister
who used to braid
my long hair?  Every morning,
your strong hands
on my head, patting it tenderly
when you were done.  Where
are you, who studied
late into the night
and woke early, singing
as you walked
through the corridors
of our house?  Where
does a voice go? Laughter?
Footsteps?  How
could those rooms
not be anywhere
anymore?  Like you,
they pulsed with life:
our running, our shouts
to each other to join
some game.  Sometimes
our tears.  How,
my sister, sister who came
into this world
before me, who tasted it,
learned it, told me
about it — how,
when every cell I am
is filled with you — how
can you not be here?

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.