Day 465

Two children sit in a tent
made of rags, torn clothing. It’s
raining, rain soaks
the flimsy roof of the tent,
drips through the holes.
The older child
is teaching her brother to read
from an old magazine she found
long ago. No school
for over a year.  The girl
is trying to remember
how her teacher
taught her, pointing a finger
under the words, saying them
for her brother, asking him
to repeat.  They’re hungry, cold.
Between words the girl sits
on her hands to warm them.
Her brother cries when he can’t
get it right.  The magazine
is about things they don’t
understand — engines, cars,
trucks — but there are words
in it, and that’s all
that matters.  Overhead, planes bear
their relentless cargo.  On the ground
between their tent and the next, rain
pounds the decomposed carcass
of a cat or a dog. The girl
takes a pencil stub, writes
words she will teach her brother
in the margin of the page
of the magazine:
Rain, she writes.  Winter,
she writes.  Bomb. Wind.  Dead.