Day 364

A mother bends over her bleeding child.
She has carried him all the way
to the hospital, stepped
over fallen rock, blasted concrete.
How could a child of six
have so much blood in him?
His blood runs like a river
through broken streets.  His blood
swells like the sea, like the rains
that will come.  His blood is a waterfall
that spills from his chest, his abdomen,
drains arms, legs, face; so that
when she lays him down 
on the hospital floor, her hand
cradling his head, he is as white
as the walls, and nothing
in him is moving except his blood
that flows and flows without end.