Day 430

A mother goes to Cairo with her daughter
so the child can have surgery for her leg,
destroyed by shrapnel.  Somehow
they have been given permission 
to leave.  She goes, leaving
her other children behind
with their father, knowing
she won’t be able to get back,
sick with fear every day
that a bomb will kill them, that
one of them will lose a leg,
an arm.  She sits in a chair
in the hospital room
thinking about the brutal choice
she has had to make, listening
to her daughter talk on the phone
with her brothers as though
they were simply on vacation,
as though this were some ordinary
time, as though every word
they speak were not in danger
of being the last.  Outside
the window of their room,
birds fly high in the sky.
If they’re fast, if they don’t
tire, if no drone
severs their wings, they will make it 
across the borderless air.