Day 940

…Once we had a house.
Once we had a country.
       — Mahmoud Darwish

This is your home, my child.
These shivering panels
that stand for walls.
This trembling roof:
trembling from cold? from wind?
from fear?  This near-transparent floor
caked with mud and dust, that falls
and rises with the shape
of the ground.   This
is your home: fragile,
volatile.  This
is where your mother
birthed you, where
you were conceived.
This is all we can offer
to protect you from summer
and winter.  From airstrikes
and fires.  This delicate
membrane, this jacket
of rags, of nylon. Canvas.
Paper.  This is where
the fiction of solidness
concludes.  Where we learn
how transient we are. Where
we know we can count
on nothing.

Day 939

Dr. Abu Safiya

Remember the tender care
he gave your child,
the way he spoke to her
when she was brought
to his hospital:  the gentleness
of his hands, wrapping bandages
over the wound, the place
where the bone was severed,
place where now your daughter’s leg
ends.  Remember
how he held her head,
her hands.  Remember
the words he spoke
to you, the kindness in them.
Think of this now
as the doctor grows thinner,
as the cruelty of the guards
grows more intense, as rodents
and insects infest the prison food.
As the doctor is gradually
being killed…

Day 938

Oh she is wrapped
in a shroud of blood.
Her mother is holding her.
Her mother is talking to her
as though she could hear.
This morning she woke,
ate some bread, played
on the floor with her toys.
This morning she sang,
talked about wanting
to swim in the sea.
Oh she will never, now,
swim in the sea.  She will never
pick up her little stuffed lamb
again, call it by name,
lay it to sleep
in a cardboard box.  Cover it
with a blanket.  Her blanket.
Her blanket that won’t cover her
anymore.  Oh her blood
is bleeding out, bleeding
through the white cloth
of the shroud, bleeding
onto her mother.  Staining
her mother’s clothes:  four years
of blood being pumped by her heart.
Four years of learning
all she could learn
about being alive.  Will
she be buried now
wrapped in her blood?
Will her mother release her
into the earth with only
this hood, this cape
of her blood
to comfort her child,
to keep her warm?

Day 937

He’d gone out
to collect cardboard,
cardboard for fuel, so
his family could eat.  Not
long ago, a brother of his
did the same. Came
to the same end:  killed
by a drone.  Gathering cardboard.
Their father is blind:  his sons
were his eyes.  His sons
guided him through his days.
Carried him where he
needed to go.  Held his hands.
Built fires to cook with,
fires for warmth.  Now
this child, who was nine,
is dead.  And his brother,
dead.  And the drones
hover above, seeking
their targets.  A child.
His father’s world.

Day 936

Dr. Abu Safiya

Have you seen daylight?
Can you stand?  Is your body broken
like your heart after your son
was murdered,
laid in the ground,
when you walked
— standing tall — back
into the hospital
to treat your patients?  
What food are the guards
feeding you?  Have you lost
half your weight:  the weight
of your child? More?  The weight
of all the children you treated?
How bruised is your skin?
Do you speak in silence
to your lost son?
Have you been able
to touch the earth, ever,
in all these months?  Earth
where he lies?  Ravaged earth.
Do you know that flowers
are blooming
now?  Have you heard birdsong
through the impenetrable walls
of the prison?
Breezes through high
new leaves? The voice
of anyone you love?

Day 935

The boy has lost
both his legs.  Lost?
As though they
could be found somewhere?
Somewhere? Where his house
was? Where his school
was?  Where his
friends were? His
laughter?  Now he sits
in a wheelchair, pushed
by his brother.  It’s been so long
since the bombing, the hospital,
the boy can’t remember
what it was like
to run, play ball.  He watches
his brother, kids
in other tents.  Sometimes he dreams
he still has one leg; sometimes
both.  Sometimes he dreams
nothing like this
ever happened: his parents
are living, they all
are walking together
somewhere, like they did
before, even (most
simple, most ordinary)
just to the bakery, the grocery.

Day 934

An old man
sits outside his tent
on a wooden box
in the first warm sunlight
of the day.  He’s alone.
The neighbor
who makes sure he eats
has brought him
some bread and an orange
for breakfast.  He sits.
He barely speaks.
He watches some kids
kicking a ball between tents,
watches a small girl
dig in the mud with a long spoon.
Is he remembering
his granddaughter now?
The girl he used to call
soul of my soul?  the child
who would sing to him
in her high sweet voice,
who brought him
bread and coffee
(her mother made)
in the mornings;
who, in the afternoons,
told him stories from school.
If he closes his eyes
he can almost feel her hand
in his, hear the words
she would say to him
before closing her eyes.
Before he would turn off
the light, stand and watch
as she fell asleep. Soul
of my soul.  Small
and vulnerable and alive.

Day 933

He was born
the night
the apartment tower
his parents lived in
was bombed. His mother
and father took refuge
on the campus
of the university (reduced
not long afterward
to rubble as well).
After some hours,
his mother began screaming
with pain: she was in labor.
In labor amid the rubble.
In labor accompanied by
flames, explosions.
Without blankets, water, monitors.
Other women assisting.
Her child born on a bed of ash,
to the wail
of airstrikes. His mother’s
pain. The child
now two and a half!
Surviving! Walking. Talking.
Knowing no world
besides bombs.
Hunger. Dust.
Yet laughing, singing,
playing with rocks,
sticks, dirt. Child
of the genocide. Child
of his parents’ fear, their
desperation. Their urgent love.

Day 932

A body
by the side of the road,
body of a young man.
Somebody’s son. Probably
somebody’s brother. Will he
be brought to some
barely functioning hospital
without a name, an address?
With no one to claim him,
no one alive to whom
he belonged? Say
what we can about him:
a young man, maybe
nineteen, twenty. Thin:
possibly hadn’t eaten
in days. Time of death:
earlier today. Body
not completely cold.
Death by what was fired
from a drone. Yesterday
he was alive: we can guess
that he spoke, walked,
maybe slept. Was surrounded
by others he might
have lived with.

Day 931

The artifacts of loss
are stacked around you —
haphazardly, among the rubble.
A single shoe, no laces. Handle
of a pot. Handle of a tricycle.
A ragged sweater, cover
of a laptop, a phone
with a cracked screen, bits
of linoleum tile that must have lined
some light-filled kitchen,
to judge from the fading. Pieces
of lives, each resonant
with memories, each steeped
in something unspeakable.
What will you throw
into that mound? Your precious
books? Your grandmother’s
chair? The fragrances
of her cooking? Your child’s voice?