Day 267

The child is reciting an alphabet of loss:
her father her brother her uncle
another uncle her cat her baby sister
two cousins three cousins six
She names them, counts them
Makes a little line on a scrap of paper
for each one
Her cousin she played dolls with:  a line
Her uncle who taught her
how to read:  a line
Her father, who only days ago
carried her on his shoulders
Some of them are not
even buried, not even found
from under the rubble
But there they are on the page: lines
And she will save the paper, she says
to the girl squatting beside her
in the dust, so she can add
more lines when she needs to