Day 409

Voices are calling from under the rubble.
Some were buried there
an hour ago, some yesterday.
Some have been there
for more than a year. The concrete
grows heavier, bears the weight
of thousands of stories.  Some of the buried are
living, some dead.  Children are crying out
for their parents; parents are calling
their children’s names.  The voices are urgent,
angry, grieving, confused:  a moment ago
we were sitting at our table, sleeping
in our beds, reading at our desks.  Where
is the brown dog
who lay on the rug?  His pained voice,
too, cries from under the crumbled
walls.  He is desperate to find his people,
the ones whose touch comforted him,
the ones he was supposed to protect.  Even
when bodies have turned to dust, when
pieces of bone are all 
that sticks out between fallen
slabs, the voices persist, weeping or screaming.
You hear them in your sleep, you hear them
when you sit in your chair, 
when you walk by the way.
Don’t forget us, they call. Don’t think
you have destroyed us, disappeared us.