Day 274

You walked home and saw bodies
severed from themselves, parts
of shattered bodies on the bare ground.
You’d gone out to buy bread 
for your child
and came home to find he had
no mouth.  No face. I am not writing
a litany of horrors, a catalogue
of images intended to shock.
I am talking about a morning.
I am talking about a place
that had been like other places:  
houses, roads, playgrounds.
I am talking about what you did
that morning, when your child
was hungry.  When you promised him
bread. You to whom I am speaking
know these things are not
imagined.  You whose days
move from anguish to anguish.  You
who wrapped your child in a shroud
with the bread you brought him,
the bread he asked you for.