Day 516/Ceasefire Day 46

Just yesterday her father
was playing with her. Laughing.  Then
this morning he found her
cold, not breathing.  He
pounded her tiny chest
to no avail.  She was two
months old, she died
because it was cold, because
her body could not keep
its warmth.  What
to say to this father?  That
he did all he could?  That
his two months with his infant
were sweet, were filled
with hope?  Just yesterday
she was smiling at him,
her whole face radiant.
The merciless inventory
of dampness, cold, her mother’s
insufficient milk, no one
in Gaza having enough of anything
to be sustained, stole her
as surely as an airstrike
might have done.  Merciless
relentless litany of what kills.

Day 515/Ceasefire Day 45

A child of four, Mira,
eating breakfast with her family
in her tent,
is shot in the back of the head
by a sniper. The family
moves quickly, gets her
to a hospital – miraculously
functioning.  The surgeon
evaluates her, prepares her
for surgery.  The child —
miraculously — survives.  She
survives! She’s four.  Six months
later she’s dancing around
the examining room, greeting
her doctors, laughing.  But the critical 
additional care 
she needs can’t be given
here; she’ll have to go
to another country.  And her mother —
who would want
to accompany her —
has been wounded since as well,
is missing a limb.  Who
will be permitted
to go with Mira? If she’s
even permitted to leave.
She’s four.  How
can we preserve her
laughter, her dancing, her words?

Day 514/Ceasefire Day 44

Will it start again, the bombing? the boy
is asking his mother.  She is laying a blanket
over him, all she has to keep him warm.
The nights are cold.  The rains stop,
then start again.  This week, she thinks,
some infants have already died, freezing.
There are things as dangerous as bombings,
she says to herself, rubbing the boy’s
feet to warm them.  Tonight 
they have eaten, the battery
of their lantern is still working,
the skies are still empty.  Other things
besides bombings can kill, she
thinks to herself.  Her son
closes his eyes.  She has not
answered him.  One more night
she has soothed him to sleep.
She sits in the chilly tent, looking out
at the sky, wondering — like
her child — if the planes
are coming again with their deadly cargo.

Day 513/Ceasefire Day 43

Yesterday there was food, today
none.  Trucks barred
from entering.  Never mind, the mother
says to her children:  we will eat anyway.
She goes out with the youngest
to pick greens growing through
the ruins.  Her eldest daughters
gather sticks.  No fuel:  they’ll
build a fire.  Light it with matches.
What they can’t take away, the mother
tells her children, stirring greens
in the one pan they have — what they
can’t steal from us, deprive
us of, is what the land
keeps offering us.  Our land.
The courage of our hands,
our dreams.  They sit,
this mother and her children,
on the broken ground beside
their ruined house, eating.
Second night of Ramadan,
another image of resistance.

Day 512/Ceasefire Day 42

Iftar

On top of the ruins of their home
a man and a woman have placed
a small table and two simple chairs.
Under a string of fairy lights — electrified
who knows how? — they are having
a meal.  They are breaking a fast.
Let all who think defeat has come
look hard at this scene:
they are eating together,
they are eating (who
knows what?) under the darkening
sky, and speaking
together.  Let all
who think they should be afraid
take in this scene.  Over 
their bombed-out house
this first Ramadan evening,
they are living their lives.  The rest
will come later.

Day 511/Ceasefire Day 41

The girl was walking to get water
for her family.  There was
no one else:  father dead,
mother sick, younger brothers
not strong enough to carry back
heavy buckets.  She was walking,
stepping over piles of rock,
now and then slipping in deep
mud.  Walking, carrying
buckets.  Filled them.  Turned
to walk back.  Rain.  The buckets
swaying, overflowing, precious
water spilled on the ground,
useless.  That’s when
the sniper spotted her,
trapped her in his crosshairs,
shot.  That’s when
she fell.  Bleeding.  The buckets
too, full of holes. Rain
raining down on her body,
the buckets emptying. 
Emptying. No way to separate
blood from water.

Day 510/Ceasefire Day 40

The boy was found by a stranger.
Stranger?  Someone
who hadn’t known him before,
who learned somehow
that the boy’s parents
had been killed.  When?  The boy
was too young to know.  All
he knew was that they were gone.
Gone.  And that he was hungry.
Cold.  And all the stranger —
stranger? — knew 
was that there was a child
younger than three, perhaps;
unable to talk (from trauma?
because of his age?) who needed
someone to take him,
and the stranger 
took him. Kept him.  Cared for him.
And this is a story
of how, when people have nothing
or next to nothing, they can be willing
to share it with a child who has
even less.  And this is a story
about the way love
is a form of resistance.

Day 509/Ceasefire Day 39

How many days were you
under the rubble?
I think it was two.  Maybe three.
Day and night were not
that different.  Everything
was dark.  No sky
between blocks of concrete.
Nothing.
How many kilometers
between where you went afterward
and the home you fled?
Home?  Sixteen kilometers.
Seventeen. Thousands, millions,
if you’re asking about what
I had there. A home.  More
than a home.  An infinity
of kilometers.  How many
people did you lose?
Do you mean family?  Friends?
Neighbors?  How many people?
Sixty, seventy thousand.  More.
We could count the ones
who are still breathing but
who wouldn’t really say
they were alive.  Alive
is different.  We could double
those numbers and never
arrive at the end.
What are you doing
now?  Lifting one stone.
setting it aside, then
lifting another.  Breathing.
Planting anything green.
No, tell me: what
are you doing now?
Counting.  Counting.

Day 508/Ceasefire Day 38

Overnight, three small children
freeze to death.  No house, no
roof, no warmth but the warmth
of their parents’ bodies, bodies
also fending off the cold.
February.  Rain.  They had come
this far, little ones born
to the wail of drones, lullabies
of falling, shattering; little ones
whose skin was intimate with dust
and the coarseness of blankets
too light, too worn
to shelter them.  They had come
all this way, carried
in the weakened arms
of their mothers.
Back to where they began,
back to what they had 
been carried away from.
All this way, through months
of horror: only to feel their bodies
shut down, organ by tiny organ,
until there was nothing left
in them to resist.  Until
it was death that took them
from their mothers’ arms.
Carried them off.

Day 507/Ceasefire Day 37

Come with me, the girl says to her brother.
I’ll show you something beautiful.
Her brother takes her hand.  They’re stepping
over fallen concrete, jagged stones; careful
of what’s there – unexploded weapons?
Walls that might collapse, so tenuously
standing?  Come with me, she tells him.
They are climbing, climbing.  At last
they get to a place where she tells him
to look straight ahead.  What 
are we looking at?  he asks her. All
I see is more of what we’ve 
been climbing over.  No, she says.
Look!  can’t you see the fields
of flowers?  the planted rows
of peppers, zucchini? Can’t you see
the school with its playground, 
its windows reflecting everything back?
The children running?  Her brother
stands, squints.  Puzzled.  All I can see
is what we just saw, he says to her.
She holds his hand more tightly,
looks into his eyes.  This is what will be,
she says to him, knowing he doesn’t
understand.  Maybe you’ll see better
if you close your eyes.