Day 309

I wanted to be in that school
to study, the boy is saying:  not
to live there, not with so many
other families, so much
noise, so little food, so few
books.  I had a friend, the boy
is saying, but when the shell
exploded in the school my friend
exploded with it; I saw pieces
of flesh fly through the air
and they were his flesh.  A minute
before that, we were talking
about algebra, remembering
the teacher we had. I had wanted to be
in that school to study
but the whole school is gone now
anyway, and my friend
is gone, and I’m trying to remember
the last thing he told me,  something
about differential
equations, so strange
to be talking one minute about equations
and then suddenly not
be alive…