Day 167

Why did I pick up this child
and carry her with me
from the ruined house
and not my other children?
Was she sitting beside me on the rug?
Had I been feeding her at the table?
Were we asleep together in the narrow room
that looked onto the garden?
A child’s counting game:  the garden is gone,
the room is gone, the table is gone,
the rug is gone.  The house is gone.
And the other children? the boy
with the bright laugh, the tall boy who ran
faster than all the others? the girl
who was too small even to know her name?
In boxes in the bombed childrens’ hospital, a doctor
is sorting severed limbs.  He labels
the boxes:  Hammad, foot.  Samira, right arm.
As though the limbs could some day
rejoin the bodies they came from.