Day 454

Three children are standing
outside the tent they have made
from bits of cloth, plastic wrapping,
paper.  It has all fallen apart
in the rain.  It’s not
a tent anymore but a tangle of wetness,
one piece indistinguishable
from another, the way bodies
that have been bombed —
their parents, their brothers —
become indistinguishable
from each other.  The way,
when they went to find them
in the place where they had been
killed, the children found hands,
toes, pieces of shirts; but no
parents.  No brothers.  No
whole bodies they could
identify.  Three children stand
in the rain, sorting through
what had sheltered them
for a while, trying to identify
one panel, one shred of cloth:
this was the door we made,
this was what we used to hang
over what we called a window.  But now
with everything else that isn’t
left for them, this too — 
the naming of things —
is slipping away from them
in the rain that keeps falling, falling.