Day 226

The man is weeping and shouting at the surgeon.
Fix my daughter!  Why can’t you fix my daughter?
His daughter is seventeen, his only child.
A week ago his wife was killed, his brother, his nephew.
A week ago his daughter was sitting with friends
outside their tent, laughing, 
singing songs they’d listened to before.
Before. Now she lies in a bed in the single hospital,
one leg gone, infection invading her body
they do not have medicine to cure.  This is 2024,
the father is shouting.  Where are the antibiotics?
The girl closes her eyes.  It’s not the hospital corridor
she wants to see — bodies on the floor, vomit, blood —
but a place she remembers, a rock on the beach
where she used to sit, watching the waves.  Over and over,
one after the next. Before, she says to herself.
Where I was before.  Where I am going now?
She can hear the waves, they are stronger
than her father’s shouting, stronger than the surgeon’s
gentle words.  They cover the beach and recede.  
Cover.  Recede.