Day 472/Ceasefire Day 2

Give me your hand, little sister.
We fled our home when you
were too young to remember.
What you know of this world
is the constant noise of bombings,
the pitch of drones, the stench
of blood, shit, corpses.  Give me
your hand.  I will show you —
now that you’re old enough
to walk — where we could take in
the fragrance of jasmine. The herbs
we planted: basil, sage.  I’ll show you
where flowers grew that attracted bees:
the sound you could have heard
though this first year of your life
was their humming and the flutter
of birds’ wings over the blossoms.
I’ll walk you to where
the lemon trees stood, show you
the place our father built a bench
where we sat in the shade on summer
afternoons.  Our house was there,
where I’m pointing.  I could tell you
what happened in every room
all my sixteen years: friends
who came, cousins
you’ll never know.  Here,
over these gray stones, is the way
I ran, carrying you.  Here’s
where our father was shot and killed.
Here is where you started to cry
from the noise and the smoke, and where
I took a path that was hidden and promised
to hold you until we were safe.  (Were we
ever safe?)  Here, little sister, is what
we’ve returned to. Here is where,
amid this wreckage and dust, we begin again.