Day 338

A woman is cleaning her house
with its fallen walls, its shattered windows.
Somehow she has found a mop, a broom, 
a bucket of water that had been used
to clean something else.  This
is still our home, she says
to her children, this is 
what we have.  The two children
sit cross-legged on a concrete slab
that had once divided indoors from outdoors,
sweetness from terror.
Their mother hands each child
a rag.  Wipe whatever you see,
she tells them; this
belongs to us.  As long as it’s here,
as long as we’re here — minutes?
hours? years? — it belongs to us.