Day 222

The schools are burning.  The classrooms
are charred.  The walls
are blown out.  The chairs, the tables
are unrecognizable.  The children
who were playing, even yesterday,
on the soccer field, are not there now.
The soccer field has been bombed.
The families have moved west, the city
doth sit solitary that was full
of people…The child
sitting on the road, holding
an empty plastic bottle —
so dehydrated
he doesn’t even have tears to cry —
solitary child, his parents
somewhere under the rubble —
A woman whose children are missing
comes, takes his hand, offers him
a sip of water from a bottle she’s carrying….