Day 350

I am thinking now of Refaat’s daughter,
the youngest, the one to whom
he had been reading stories, the one
who hadn’t liked to read and then
(during the bombings) loved it, started
reading constantly and writing
stories, her own stories, showing them
to her father.  I am thinking of her,
if she survives, twenty years
from now, a young woman
waking along some tree-lined
street, listening to the sounds
of her city but also to words
that start to form paragraphs
in her head:  her story, Refaat’s,
and how they intertwine and how
she is carrying it forward, playing
with language, inventing, asking
her father within her should I say
this or that, should I tell of the deaths
in this way, should I speak of those
I didn’t know, of a world
unknown to me, a world
you wanted to show me?
I am thinking about Refaat’s
youngest daughter and how
she must be hungry now, cold
as the nights move toward autumn,
missing her father.  I am wanting
to tell her to hold on
to every memory she has, the sweet
ones and the brutal ones, and to believe
that one afternoon twenty years
from now she will come home
from wherever it is she’s
been walking, sit down
at a desk that reminds her
of Refaat’s, take out
her pen, a sheet of paper.  Begin.