Day 220

(photograph of a mother and child)

She holds her child wrapped in a white sheet.
You can see the shape of his body
and the way her hands are holding him.
She has held him like this hundreds of times —
picking him up to take him to bed,
pulling him away from his toys, his friends,
carrying him when he fell and scraped his knees.
You can feel the weight of him in her arms
and the familiarity. Look at her eyes:
she is looking far, far.  To another place
where her child is going without her?
To a place free of bombs, of drones?
She is learning his weight, the feel of his body,
by heart, before she needs to surrender him
to the charred ground, the ruined ground.