Day 341

The child would have started school
today.  He would have walked
with his little satchel of notebooks,
taken his seat among his friends,
listened to his teacher, sounded out
the words, come home and shown
his mother, his older sister,
how well he was learning to read.
Instead he sits in a tent
listening to drones, bombs,
cries.  These have become
for him an alphabet: this sound
means those tents, those families
have been hit.  That sound
means another sound will come
within minutes, and who
is it coming for?  The child
stares up at the blackened
sky, reads it as though
he were reading a story.