Day 1,052

The child has spent
the genocide making objects
from wet sand, mud, what clay
she can find. Whenever
she’s sad, afraid,
Ravaged with loss,
she makes something.
She tells this to her mother,
her grandmother, whatever friends
she has who are still
alive. Make something,
she tells them. Cradle the sand,
the mud, in your hands. See
how, minute by minute,
it starts to change. To grow
round. To grow deep. To
begin to be able to hold
something else. Maybe
not food, she says,
when there is none. Maybe
not seeds, if
there are none. Maybe
tears. Maybe a memory
of a cousin, gone now
for two years. Maybe
light pouring down
from the moon. Maybe
cool air that used to be sweet
with the smell of jasmine.

Day 1,051

A bird has gotten caught
in the netting you’ve used
to divide one part of this tent
from another. Old fishnet,
something you threw quickly
in a bag before yet another
displacement, thinking it might
sometime be useful. Now it serves
to separate the part of the tent
where you all sleep
from the part
where you write. Symbolic? But
helpful. And now a bird — a small
bird, young, dark — has gotten trapped
in it toward the top. With each attempt he makes
to escape, he entangles himself more. His wings strain
to flutter but can’t. He squawks, cries, beak grasping the netting
as though he could bite himself free. You stand. Watch.
Wait for the moment that doesn’t come, when the net
might part, unfold, set him loose.
At last you can’t bear it. Brother,
you whisper to him. Fellow victim
of this genocide. Captured here like ourselves. Like our children.
You pick up a knife. Climb up onto
an overturned bucket. Slit the net
where the bird is held hostage. It droops
to the floor of the tent. The bird
hesitates a moment.
Opens his wings. Flies out,
into the open sky.

Day 1,050

What would you be doing now,
you wonder, if the genocide
hadn’t happened? If your parents,
brothers, grandparents
hadn’t been killed? Your friends
not slaughtered? Your professors
not assassinated? What
would you be studying? Who
would be going to classes
with you? What boulevards
would you walk, under what
trees, alongside which
shops, cafés, libraries?
You stand on the hill of rubble
where your house once stood,
look out at the city
you lived in, try to find
one landmark, one view
you can recognize. What
would you be doing
this year, this month,
this moment? If not
standing on the ruins
of your twenty-year-old life,
imagining everything restored?
Imagining what part you will take
in the restoration?

Daty 1,049

If you forget them
it will be as though
they have died again. Again
and again, every day
you don’t think of their eyes,
their voices, the song
one of them sang
in your third grade class;
the smile another one
had on his face
when you’d walk
through the door.
the bombs that killed them
were falling again,
the planes flying overhead,
releasing their deadly cargo.
As though the ground
were shattering again, their buildings
collapsing. If you forget them
they will mulch into history
like dry leaves, petals
ripped from their stems. Death
stalked them, gripped them,
disappeared them; but you,
who knew them — you
who were friend, cousin,
schoolmate, sister —
you have kept them
with you, have never
released them, have vowed
not to let them be gone.

Day 1,048

Gaza City

A summer’s day. A café by the sea.
People coming to talk,
eat, tell a few stories, catch up
with others they haven’t seen.
Suddenly an explosion. Suddenly
an impact so strong that bodies
are hurled up into the air,
even into the water. When it’s over,
seventeen are dead. Women,
men, children. Students
who had been reading, writing.
Teachers who had been planning
their lessons. Mothers
who’d brought their small children
for a sugary treat,
to distract them
from everything else
the occupier had taken from them.

Day 1,047

No chairs. No desks. No
blackboards. Not even notebooks.
Yet daily the children
come to school, to the tent-school,
to sit inside the tent or outside,
according to the weather.
Three years without school.
Ten, twelve, thirteen displacements.
Some of the children without legs.
Some without arms, without hands.
A few who have lost an eye.
Yet whatever they learned
before the genocide
has not been lost: a girl
struggles with multiplication.
Two digits. Three. Remembering
that she learned it before. Remembering
the calm classroom, trees swaying
outside the windows
in a gentle breeze. The child
who sat next to her, the one
behind her: gone. Gone
with their families. Their
homes. Two digits. Three
digits times three. Slowly,
slowly, it comes back to her.
Multiplier. Multiplicand.
She remembers how, she writes
the product of the numbers
on the sheet of paper the teacher
has given her, torn in five parts,
for five children.

Day 1,046

She used to be able
to stay at home
with her younger children.
Her husband earned enough
so they could all live: eight
children, a house, a garden.
Then the bombing. The house
destroyed. Garden
decimated. Husband
wounded, confined
to a wheelchair. She began
selling beans. Beans
she bags halfway
through the night, then piles
the bags in a cart, wheels them
from tent to tent. The kids
take care of their father
and one another. All day
this mother sells her beans
until she has just enough money
to buy what her children
will need the next day.
All day all she thinks of
is getting her children
one more sunrise.

Day 1,045

She’s eight months old now,
the child born over a year
after your first child died,
eight months carried
in your womb. Three days:
all of you crushed airless
under the rubble. His father and you
survived by some miracle,
pulled out weak and bleeding,
bones shattered. The baby
nearly ready to be born,
cut without heartbeat
from your body. Sometimes,
lying awake at night,
you talk to him. Speak
the name you’d have
given him, tell him
about his sister. Sometimes
you tell her about the brother
she would have played with,
laughed with, learned from.
This morning a woman asked you
how many children you have.
Two, you told her.
But the genocide
deprived them
of each other. One
here. The other
never arrived.

Day 1,044

Who will take care of this child
now that his mother
cannot cross the border
for the surgery she needs?
Months of waiting. Permission
promised. Denied. Appealed.
Promised again and denied again.
Meanwhile the cancer
does not ask permission. Crosses
the border of this organ. That one.
Colonizes. Pursues. Consumes.
The child brings water and food
to his mother, but he cannot save her.
At night he hears her moaning
in pain she has tried to contain all day.
Who will care for him? Many
in other tents have offered. Meanwhile
they lie together, awake
in the dark, while the invaders
consider their moves.

Day 1,043

Umm Atta Al-Nashash

Every day she searches
for the remains of her sons.
Four of them, all
martyred, all buried
somewhere under the rubble.
Four of them. She’s seventy-five.
Tired. Hungry. Every day she combs
the area where they were killed,
looking for anything she can find
that she might hold in her hands:
a fragment of a shirt, a shoe,
some strands of hair. All those years
they were children. Students. Fathers.
All those years they cared for her,
brought her food when she was sick.
Took her to visit the graves of their father,
their grandparents. Laughed with her
at the silliness of their own children.
Where is the son with the beautiful voice?
The son who could fix anything
that was broken? The son
who woke early to tend his garden?
The son who built his own house?
All day she looks for a sign
that they lived in this world.
That they touched the earth. Knew
sunlight, wind, water.  That
they have not disappeared
from this life without leaving a trace.