Day 446

She has buried her husband, her sister,
a child.  Now she must bury another child.
Just yesterday she was brushing his hair.
Just yesterday she went out to find food
for him, leaving him with her one child,
the eldest, who’s still alive.
She found a little bread, put it
into his mouth the way one would feed
an animal or a bird. She remembers the feel
of his wet lips on her fingers, and this
she promises herself never to forget. Her daughter,
the eldest, stands next to her in the rain
as she lays the child in a white shroud
into the earth.  Rain falls on him
as he lies there, insects scurry
through newly shoveled dirt.  They may
live with him there or find their way
back up into the light.  They alone, she thinks,
are free to come and go.  She looks
at her daughter, who has lost a father,
an aunt, two brothers.  With each one
buried, the mother thinks, she’s lost
part of me too.  She thinks of the dark ground,
receiving some all at once, wrapped in white cloth,
and some, like herself, wrapped only in grief,
a little at a time. 

Day 445

She learns her cousins are still alive
but their parents are dead.  She’s eight.
Her cousins are twins, four years old.
She asks her mother what they might need,
since they’ve lost everything:  clothes, toys.
I can give them my clothes, she says; but
since their house was destroyed, all she has
is a couple of t-shirts, one pair of cotton pants
that, in the last months, have grown too short.
She lies on the floor of her tent, wondering
what she can give them to
console them.  She would give them
her toys, but she has none.  She’s made a doll
from a torn piece of a towel:  tied it with string
at the top to give it a head, drawn eyes
and a mouth with a used expo marker
she’d found in the dust.  It’s her only toy
but she’ll share it with them. The thought
calms her a little.  What they want 
most of all, she knows, is their parents
Their parents have gone to wherever it is
you go after death; they’ve joined
her own father there.  She imagines them
sitting around a table, talking and laughing,
smoking, drinking coffee, the way it was
before everything happened.  I can share
my mother with them, she thinks, and she imagines
the twins sitting on her mother’s lap
as though there were a chair, as though 
there were a warm room to sit in.

Day 444

She was waiting for the border to open
so she could leave to get treatment.
She knew her cancer was spreading,
didn’t want to tell her children, didn’t want
to tell anyone.  There was enough
for them to worry about
without worrying about the mass
that was growing in her breast.  Every day
she checked it.  Every day her hand
found its way in the dark
to the secret place it was growing.
It was firm, unmoving.  It was
claiming more space.  She thought of it
as the Occupation:  its dark
invasiveness, its inexorable advancement.
She was waiting for the border to open
so someone could remove it, give her
medicine against its onslaught,
strafe it at its roots the way bombs
had uprooted the trees of her childhood.
She was waiting, though she doubted
the border would open in time; and this
she told no one, only silently spoke at night
to the tumor, conspired with it
to keep hiding itself, whispered
they would remain at war with each other, 
a war she wasn’t willing to give up.

Day 443

A father carries his baby son
out of the hospital.  This morning
he dressed this child
in a little striped t-shirt, long
sleeves, blue pants.  Now the t-shirt
is stained with blood, pants
stained with blood, the child’s
head split open on one side.
The father tenderly carries his son,
lifts one of his legs, an arm:
limp, when only this morning
the child had been crawling
around the tent, laughing.
Laughing!  The day has passed.
The father walks through the rubble, 
cradling his son.  It’s night.
It’s raining.  He takes off
his jacket, wraps
his son in it to keep him dry
and warm, whose body already
is growing cold.  How
can he lay this child
in the hard ground?
How can the life
that was in him
be cold and gone?  How
can his son be dead
who never even learned to walk?

Day 442

(from a photograph)

She stands on what may be a beach.
Someone has brushed her hair neatly,
tied it back in a bun, held it in place
with a white headband.  She wears a dress
with a tiered skirt, ruffled half-sleeves
bordered in lace.  She’s looking at something
to her left.  She could be nine, ten.  Younger?
Her feet, in white clogs, firmly planted
on pebbly sand. In the earlobe
you can see, an earring with a little stone.
Someone has been able to care for her well
at least until now. It’s only after a moment
you notice she has just one arm.  Her left arm
hangs at her side, thumb buried in the printed fabric
of her dress.  Her right arm, amputated
at the shoulder. What is she looking at, 
mouth closed so tightly, eyes clearly
focused?   Is it all she has left behind?
Everything she can remember?   
She could be holding back tears.  She may
be watching as a cat or a dog
or a younger child, maybe hobbled,
attempts to walk toward her. There’s no one else
in the picture, the space behind her
vast. You see how alone she is, this girl
with one arm standing with nothing, no one,
around her, her dress clean and ironed
as though she were going somewhere.  As though
she were able to go somewhere.

Day 441

A child walks barefoot up a road,
surrounded on both sides by bombed-out
buildings, carrying two half-gallon
milk containers.  He is going
to get water for his family,
the ones remaining. He is eight
or nine, he wears no jacket,
only a thin shirt and shorts
though it’s late December.  Who
has sent him on this errand?
What kind of water will he find?
To whom has he said what could be
(any moment the last moment)
his final goodbye?

Day 440

He awakened to cats
licking his face, nuzzling his hands.
Like him, they were hungry, weary.
Like him, they were afraid.
He who had so little food
had been feeding them for weeks.
Like him, they had no home anymore,
no warm place to sleep, no comfort.
He’d sat on slabs of fallen concrete,
tearing off bits of bread, tossing them
to the cats; they’d learned what time
he’d be there, came every day
at that time.  But now 
he lay on the ground, not moving,
blood running out of one leg, 
staining the dust.  Eyes closed.
The cats stayed by him.  One of them
licked the blood, tried to clean
his wound.  Another licked his eyelids
until he opened his eyes
and saw them, his hungry cats,
his friends.  He touched one of them
with his hand; the soft fur
stirred him, he tried to sit up,
fell back, then was able to sit again.
His leg hurt, but he could move it.
The cats settled around him, made
their soft sounds, lay down.  The man
stood.  His leg was bleeding
a little less.  He looked at the cats.
He thanked them, he thanked them
aloud. They began to walk with him
down the road, toward the hospital.

Day 439

He lay on the ground, everyone
fleeing, moving past him.
The street was unrecognizable,
the sound of footsteps, shouting,
children crying around him.
He lay there, half-conscious,
unable to move.  For a while
he imagined ordinary life:
say they were on their way
to a movie, a grocery, a café.
He drifted in and out, from 
the ruined street to things
he remembered, to a place
he’d never been, a green
quiet place where he walked,
met others who had also
disappeared,  The air
darkened, grew cold.  He found
himself making out words, then
moving a foot, a leg.  He stood.
Shook off the unnameable
places he’d been, looked out
at the world he had left
for a while, and then regained.
Joined the solemn parade
of those who were walking.

Day 438

After he lost his leg
he stopped wanting to live.
Hard to imagine staying alive
when you’re ten
and you know you’ll never run
again.  After he lost his leg
he lost his appetite, lost
his dreams, lost his sleep.
The sky closed around him,
daylight smothered him. How 
do you grieve a leg?  How
do you learn
from one day to forever
to say shoe
and not shoes, foot and not feet?

Day 437

They were inseparable, the two girls.
Sisters, four years apart; but they looked
like twins except for the height.  Their names
rhymed, their smiles rhymed, they loved
the same stories.  At night they would lie
in their beds and talk until their mother
had to come and quiet them.  In the morning
they called out together for breakfast, got ready
for school together, walked together with matching
backpacks, found each other as the day wore on
in the hallways, on the playground.  Now they sleep
in the same grave, one grave for the two of them.
They will sleep there forever, inseparable.
Their mother visits them, carries
in her pockets small shreds she could find
of their clothing to keep them close
to her, stained
with the blood of one of them?  Both?