Day 283

What you saw was a place
that had been a school.
There had been people inside, not
studying — taking shelter.
Then suddenly there were parts of walls
flying through the air with parts
of bodies.  Blood, severed limbs.
A piece of a blackboard
with portions of names
written on it:  those
who had been there?  A blanket,
unaccountably intact, wrapped
around nothing.  What you
saw were lives
shattered and stopped,
like the syllables, half-
syllables of names
careening — Muh, Sor —
And what they had been saying
to one another, and what
they had been thinking, whom
they had loved — all 
coming down like cinders
to the parched ground.