Day 473/Ceasefire Day 3

A boy on his donkey
is shot by a sniper.  Killed.
A man runs to retrieve his body
and is killed as well.  It’s the third day
of the ceasefire but the soldiers
don’t want to stop.  Their habit
is killing, what they know
is to fix a target in their sight,
point, fire.  The boy
had been happy:  he’d had enough food
for the first time in months.  He’d fed
his donkey.  He’d been thinking
how it would be 
to go back to school, to look
for his friends, see who
was still living.  The boy
had survived this long
when the sniper found him.
The sniper was bored: a long
afternoon, not much action.
It was the third day
of what they were still calling
a ceasefire.  Why now? Why
this child?