Day 546

The children are given pens,
paper, a teacher
who tells them to draw
whatever they like.  Whole
new packets of colored pens,
neatly ordered, light green
next to dark green, turquoise,
sapphire.  They draw
spreading branches, deep grasses.
The sky.  They draw
what was their world, what isn’t
their world.  They draw flowers,
friendly dogs, bowls
heaped with fruit.  They draw
what they need and can’t have,
what they miss and what
they used to live with.  They draw
as they drew before the bombings,
before the deaths, before 
the rubble.  They are
remaking their neighborhoods, 
their families, their lives. Their energy
returns to them as they
draw, flows
as the vibrant ink flows
from their pens onto the paper.

Day 545

A mother lays her two-week old
daughter in a tiny cradle.  Sleep
peacefully, little one, she
tells her.  She has
bathed her, diapered her,
dressed her, covered her.
The older children
are asleep already; only this one
had been awake, her small
perfect eyes looking up, up.
Up at the night sky, the stars,
beyond the flap of the tent.
Then the bombing comes,
the relentless explosions,
the smoke.  My children
are on fire! the mother
screams, doing
whatever she can
to extinguish the flames.
In the end, of all
her children, only one
remains.  The infant
gone, who lived
two weeks, gone
before her perfect eyes
could find their focus.
Before she could smile
at her mother, who now
must bury her. Only the stars
remain untouched, shine
from their infinitely distant
points in the sky
as though nothing of this
had never happened.

Day 544

from a photograph

This sister wanted to be a writer.
This sister wanted to be an artist.
Now the writer writes
about her sister’s killing — crushed
by the wall of the room
she’d been sleeping in.  Now
the artist is dead, who drew,
days before the bombing,
a tree bare of leaves, a brilliant sun
shining behind its naked
branches, numbers
naming the year to come.
New year that could have been
filled with possibilities, now
carved forever in stone
over the grave of the girl
who slowly, carefully,
penciled its numbers.  How
can she be gone, who lit up
the house like the sun
she drew?  How
could her vibrant
thirteen-year-old body
be bare of leaves?

Day 543

What do you ask of us now,
our martyred brother, our brother
who wrote poems, who
loved to run, our brother
who fed roving hungry dogs
half the food he could find
for himself, our brother
who sat on a rock last night
and sang for us, sang
for the little ones?  Only
that you remember me.  Only
that our stories be recorded.
Only that you remember
I cherished you,
that the songs I sang,
the words I wrote,
were for my people. That I loved
sunlight and warmth and walking
in late afternoon.  Only
that you remember I lived,
that my footprints, which
disappear now in the rain,
the bombings, will be absorbed
by the earth, will accompany you
as you continue our struggle.  

Day 542

The mother is being held
by others — her sister? her brother? —
as she walks to bury her son.  She 
is wailing, sobbing.  Her other children
walk with her, heads down, silent.
Why?  Why?  What reason
could anyone give? This son,
this young man, her eldest.  Her
firstborn.  All
he might have done, all
he might have said.  The years
he might have had, the work
he might have offered.  His mother
walks, barely able to move
one leg, then the other.  She
is carrying the weight
of her son, though others
have borne his body
to the gravesite.  She is carrying
the weight of all his days
unspoken, unrecorded, unlived.

Day 541

The boy, sixteen, wounded
in an airstrike, was put back together
by a surgeon.  He was recovering,
about to be sent home.  He would
have been cared for, rested, come
back to health.  To himself.  The surgeon,
from another country, risking
his own life to be there, stands,
desolate, in what remains
of the hospital.  He would have
lived a normal life, he is saying
about the boy.  But now
he’s dead.  Dead
with his young hopes
for his life.  Dead 
with his body, perfectly
repaired, strong, healing.
The doctor’s skill, his care,
his joy at the boy’s recovery —
they accompany the boy
to the grave, where his young,
perfect body —
whole again with the surgeon’s
work, then crushed again —
will lie for the rest of what
would have been his normal life
and then forever.  

Day 540

from a photograph

It’s Eid
and the children have been given
new clothes!  The sister and brother —
maybe five and seven? — stand,
a little awkwardly, not yet used
to the feel of clean cotton jeans,
ironed new shirts, black
shoes with shiny rubber soles —
the boy’s laces not yet tied. The girl
has a light checkered jacket,
too big around the shoulders; the boy,
a long-sleeved gray t-shirt.  They stand
so proudly, looking straight
at the camera, having thanked
whoever it is who has managed
to get these clothes to them
from far away.  Who knows
what they have lost; who knows
how many times they have had
to move, to walk for hours.  Who knows
who is alive to help the boy learn
to tie his laces, how many months
of healthy food  
it will take for the girl
to grow into her jacket. May these clothes
never be soaked in blood. May they
get dirty with the dirt of running,
climbing.  May they be worn
until these children’s arms
are too long for the sleeves, 
until the shoes have holes
from toes growing longer, longer.

Day 539

Walk down to the place
where your school used to be.
Nothing now but crushed stones,
blasted walls, now and again
the shard of a chair, a desk.
Ghost school.  Phantom school.
Sit on a pile of rubble,
imagine yourself
in a classroom.  Someone
beside you — your friend,
the one you’ve known forever —
furiously writing notes, determined
to remember the whole lecture, as
though her life depended on it.
Maybe it did; though you can’t
ask her now.  Can’t ask her
ever again.  Her long fingers
holding a pen, toes curled
inside her shoes.  You can hear
the tick-tick of the words
she’s writing.  Words you will
never see.  Though now,
if you close your eyes 
so the ruins of your city
don’t stretch before you,
you can see the professor
lecturing, one hand in and out
of the pocket of his jacket, the other
circling the air, making
his point.  All the students
alive and watching
with rapt attention.

Day 538

A team of children plays soccer
in a charred, dusty field
on an afternoon saturated
with the stench of death.  A team
of children running, tossing
the ball from the goal, the sidelines —
each with a missing leg,
a missing arm.  And this
is not a dream, my
dream;  not a vision,
but a true thing:  they have been given
what artificial limbs there are,
they’ve been taught
it’s possible to play, to fall,
to stand back up.  They’ve learned
through these months
that loss is not all
there is; that the joy
of kicking a ball down a field
can still exist, that — if your leg
is gone, your arm
is gone, your father is gone,
your brother is gone — still
you can have this spring afternoon,
this thrill of watching the ball —
your ball! — hit the net
of the goal.  These points
mounting until the game is done
and you walk off the field,
your one arm around a friend’s
shoulder, tired and smiling.

Day 537

In memory of Hossam Shabat, assassinated March 24, 2025

Do not stop telling our story:
his last report, final
plea to us: Never
stop.  His body pulled out
of the exploded car, streaked
with his blood.  Bathed
in his own blood.  Never stop!
This is who we are.  This
is how we lived.  These
were the forces
that shaped us, carried us.
There were the names
of our children, our villages.
Tell the story! tell every story
there is, each person
a universe, each child
a crossroads of stories.
We live as long
as the stories are told.
Like a river we continue, the current
strong, now slower, now
strong again.  But never stopping.