Day 327

I am writing for you, Refaat.
I am trying to tell your story
as you asked us to do. It is not
the story you would have told.
It should be a different story.
It should not be the story
of all of you sleeping in the livingroom
so if you were bombed 
you would die together.
Refaat, you did not die
with your wife, your children,
your little daughter Alma
who was learning to read,
your eldest daughter
who died four months later,
her infant son dying with her.
This should never, Refaat,
have been your story
or anyone’s.  Your story should have been
about holding your grandson, watching
Alma read more and more, start to tell
her own stories.  I am trying
to tell a story I am only learning.
Day by day I learn it, day by day
I listen, listen for your voice, tell myself
I am living, these days, to tell your story
(If I must die/ you must live/
to tell my story…)
so as not to forget it, not
to abandon it.