Day 238

The children made up a game with pieces of cloth.
The cloth came from tents that had been burned.
The edges were singed: whatever colors
they had been, now they were turned to brown.
The children distributed the pieces, so many for each.
They made rules: how to get more, how
to win a piece of cloth from another child.
The cloth was torn, each a different shape.
Some had come from curtains, some from clothes,
some from tablecloths, towels.
Each had been a piece of a life
and the children knew that while they played.
Meanwhile there were explosions.  Meanwhile,
not far from where they were, people
were being bombed.  Fires broke out;
they could see smoke rising into the sky.
All this was at some distance from where
they kept playing their game.  One child
started crying because he had lost
all his pieces of cloth.  His mother
too had died, his grandmother
and three of his sisters.  His friend,
sitting cross-legged next to him
on the dusty ground, silently counted
his own cloth, gave him
half the pieces.