Day 431

All the infant knew of this world
was six hours lying on his mother’s body.
No water to clean the blood from his skin,
the sticky fluids, the meconium.  The cloth
he was wrapped in was his brother’s shirt.
Born in a tent, he was killed in a tent.
He looked into his mother’s eyes.
He heard his sister’s voice, his brother’s.
They stroked his head.  They held
his small hands, laid thin blankets
over him, parted the flap of the tent
so he could take in the opaque particulate air.
Waited while he slept off the work of being born,
watched as he began learning to breathe,
to see, to make sounds.  What he knew
of this world was six hours 
of love; but also cold,
trembling, his mother’s trembling.
Her empty breasts.  The sudden dark
that engulfed them all together, then sent him back
out of this life to a blankness
he had just emerged from.