Day 223

Tide coming in over the long coastline.  A child walks
with her mother.  It’s warm, they’re barefoot.  The water
feels good on their dusty feet.  They
have been walking a long time; it seems
to the child that they have done nothing but walk
since they left their home; but that was
the first leaving.  After that, more:  she can’t count
how many places they’ve left, 
but there was a tent, another tent…
And people who fell along the way:  a girl
she played with, whose name she never
learned, who had a doll with yellow hair,
the one thing they found when the girl was killed. 
Another girl, and that girl’s father, grandfather.
So many more. She cannot count
how many either, though
when she was in school she was good at counting.
The doll was all there was
to save.  She brushed the yellow hair
until it was clean, until the dust and dirt
were out of it. Gave the doll
a name, promised her she would take her
wherever she had to go next.