Day 219

Someone — a neighbor — writes a name in pencil
on a wall (let’s say there is still a wall).
It’s the name of a child whose body
hasn’t been found.  She lived in that house
where now there is nothing but broken pieces.
Even the furniture can’t be identified — was this
a chair?  A window frame?  The neighbor
writes the name of the girl’s mother
under her name.  Then her father.
Then two of her brothers.  (Another brother
died earlier, on the street, on his way
to buy flour:  the family had buried him,
they knew where he lay.) There was a cat
whose name he also writes now,
under the others: a gray cat
with eyes like the sea.  He remembers the girl
calling the cat, and this, somehow, 
is almost more than the neighbor can bear.
If someone might come to this pile
of wood and concrete, the neighbor
thinks, at least they should know
who lived here.  They will see
these names. Begin to give flesh to them, voices.