Day 1,016

Asem’s niece and nephew

Two children
laid in one grave. Brother
and sister, the only children
of their parents. Murdered
by some soldier
because they were there.
Because they were Gazan.
Because they were living
on this earth. Two children laid
together in a small grave
because there were too many
other dead. No room in the ground
for them to be buried
separately. Two children
who came from the same womb,
who played together
all the time, who knew
one another better
than anyone, better sometimes
than their parents. Now
their parents have no children.
Now the children
will never be apart. Now
their bones will mingle
as they disintegrate, as
they become soil and minerals,
as though they came
from a single body.

Day 1,015

They hand you a bag
with what they tell you
are your son’s remains.
You carry it for a while.
Feel its weight. Then dare
to look inside: a human skull.
Some fragments of bone.
Your son was tall; he’d grown
taller than you. His bones
were long — not
these shards. His face
smiling or grieving or
thoughtful. You take
the bag to your tent,
tenderly lay it down
in the place where he
used to sleep. You
can’t know — there’s
no way of knowing —
if this is your son. But it’s
some mother’s son, you
tell yourself. And
you promise yourself
to take care of whoever it is,
as you hope some other mother
whose son was also killed
will take care of yours
if that’s who she’s given.

Day 1,014

for Sami, three years old, WCNSF*

All his life now
he will attempt to recall
what it had been like
until that moment
when everything changed:
a summer night,
he and his older sister asleep,
his parents asleep.
Then the explosion.
All his life he will try
to picture his sister’s face,
to hear her voice, to think
of the game they’d been playing
the night before. To feel
the touch of his mother’s hand
on his face, smoothing his hair,
her mouth kissing his forehead.
To evoke what it was
to sit on his father’s shoulders,
imagine the conversations
they’d had as he rode —
so high! — past the rubble.
All his life he will feel
the things that had happened
without being named, without
being archived: like a rain
that falls unnoted at night,
yet leaves the air with its scent,
or the sound of a chord
that lingers with the hearer
after the strings
have been plucked; but the music
has ended, the song
disappeared, unable
to be reconstructed.

*WCNSF is the tragic designation given during the genocide to wounded children who are the sole survivors of their families: Wounded Child, No Surviving Family.

Day 1,013

Where is your sister?
Did her body explode in fragments
when a bomb projected her
into the air? Did she lie
buried under the rubble
of your house for hours,
even days, before
her breath stopped
for the last time?
Does the rubble
still cover her?
Is she flesh or skeleton?
Did someone throw her
into a mass grave? An
unmarked grave? A grave
with a number instead
of a name? Did soldiers
find her, shackle her, drag her
into their vehicle, throw her
into a prison cell, where
she crouches now in a
cramped space, with rotten
food, filthy water? Where
is the sister who sang
to you, whispered to you
the names
of her crushes, drew
portraits of everyone
she loved? How, without
knowing whether she’s
dead or alive, can you
know how to grieve her?

Day 1,012

Osama Al-Shafi

First his horse was killed
in a shelling: gentle, faithful horse
who had pulled the cart
the man depended on
to sell his small goods,
to make a small living
for his family. A month
after the horse lay dead,
the man started flying into rages,
breaking windows, punching walls.
Shouting at his wife, his father.
Then one day he told his little son
they were going to take a walk
to buy candy. He hoisted the child,
just two, onto his shoulders, began
walking in one direction; then
suddenly shifted. Started
walking east instead, toward
the yellow line, toward where
soldiers were standing. Waiting.
They walked. The child
sitting on his shoulders.
The soldiers approached.
The father kept walking toward them.
Nearly a thousand days of trauma
had clouded his mind; the loss
of his horse, his livelihood,
pushed him over the edge.
He went on walking, walking.
The child terrified, silent.
We know what happened then
only from the soldiers’ cigarette burns
on the child’s flesh, the child’s
broken sentences, his nightmares,
his vomiting. We know what happened
only from that, and from the father’s
absence — the child brought back
to his mother after a whole day,
but not back as he was; perhaps never
to be back as he was before. And his father:
disappeared into confusion,
terror, dissociation. Still disappeared.

Day 1,011

Your one-month-old
daughter was killed.
Killed. When she’d just
emerged from the womb!
Just looked deeply at you
twice, three times,
with her dark blue eyes
that might have remained
that color or turned
another. She
took you in, understood
that you were her source,
her warmth, her sustenance,
her tether to the world.
How can that tether be broken?
How can those little hands
that were only just learning to grasp
be stiff now? Unmoving?
Those perfect fingernails,
eyelashes, toenails? You
learned by heart every inch
of her body; now
that’s the only place
she’ll continue to live.
Her father martyred.
Her grandmother.
Your heart, filled with her
and emptied of her
at the same time.

Day 1,010

The father was holding
his infant son
after the airstrike.
He had held him like that
for months, the baby’s head
on his shoulder,
little feet dangling
out of the blanket. As
the father carried
the small still body
to the hospital, he thought
to himself that his child
didn’t feel all that different,
wasn’t cold or stiff.
There was blood
where the shrapnel
pierced his heart; but the baby
had bled before
and had always survived.
The father found himself
setting his child
on the ground, pressing
an ear to his tiny chest,
listening for a heartbeat.
Listening again. Again.
Saying, then shouting,
the child’s name.
He picked up
his son, kissed his small
face. Now life
began spilling out
of the child, first slowly,
in droplets; then all at once.

Day 1,009

from a photograph

It looks like a quiet stream
flowing between banks of sand
on a beach, behind which
you can see
bombed buildings where once
people lived their lives.
It looks like a stream
where a boy sits, dressed
for summer. You might think
his next act will be
to wade in the stream,
dip his feet in cool water,
maybe to walk, parting
the water, downstream
for a while. Meet others
doing the same. But
it isn’t a stream: it’s
a pool of sewage
draining down
from the tent camp he lives in.
Its stench not knowable
from the photograph, somehow
tolerated by the boy,
who is glad, for just
now, to be
sitting alone, to feel even
the least breeze
blowing in from the sea,
this momentary respite
from crowding and fear
and the buzz of drones …

Day 1,008

from a photograph

A girl, maybe twelve,
in a gauzy pink dress
with a floral pink shawl
at her shoulders,
a pink flowered barrette
in her long dark hair,
stands between two
seated women – her
mother and grandmother? –
on what may have been the terrace
of the house they’d lived in.
All we see is their backs,
the black chairs each of the women
sits in. The ruined city
before them: rubble,
cement blocks, piles
of wreckage stretching
west to the sea. How many
lie buried under that wreckage? How
many children? How many
still not counted, still
not found, still not
uncovered? They’re looking out
toward the sea, the ruins
close to the sea
pinkish now from the setting sun.
What fraught celebration
have they come from
or are about to go to?
A wedding? A birthday?
The women, too, are dressed up:
pearled embroidery on the shoulders
of the one whose left arm
is around the girl. Who, what
are they missing now,
as they look out
on what has become
of the city they lived in?

Day 1,007

The father bends over the body
of his six-year-old son, just
murdered. The child’s face
is all the shroud
does not yet cover:
small face, not yet pale
with death. The father
rocks back and forth,
moaning. Weeping.
He is not ready
to lay his son in the earth.
to say goodbye.
How could he be? Only yesterday
he and his son
were walking together,
talking, playing ball.
Only yesterday the father
was thinking how much
the boy had learned, even
without school. How much
he knew about drones,
quadcopters, uniforms. How adeptly
he counted the number
of friends and cousins
who’d died. Now his number
is added to theirs. Now
he will never be older than six.