Day 471/Ceasefire Day 1

The children are holding hands
and dancing, shouting.  Everyone
is outside:  no matter
the winter cold!  Some drones are still
crossing the sky, but the ceasefire
has happened!  It happened!
The girl goes back to where
her tent was; her brothers
are dismantling it, ripping
the flimsy nylon panels
that didn’t keep out
the rain, playing
tug of war with the shreds.
No use for them now!  We’re
going home!  She stands,
watching them. She is thinking
now about their mother,
who went out looking for food
one morning and never
came back.  She is thinking
about the garden they had
in the north, and how their mother
would have wanted to look
for it, see if anything green
could be peering out
from under the rubble,
and how she would have
tended it, nurtured it.  The girl
picks up a stone from the dusty ground
near where their tent had been,
puts it in her pocket.  This
is for my mother, she
thinks.  This is how
I will carry her home from this place,
lay her there where our garden was.