Day 477/Ceasefire Day 7

You wanted to go back
to what it was:  your room
with its colored curtains, your bookshelf,
your desk with the papers you meant
to set in order. Your father
pruning the trees in the last light
of day.  Your mother
walking in from work,
having stopped on the way
for greens, lentils, flour.
Your brothers with their laptop
streaming sports, your little sister
with her kitten and her wild hair.
You wanted to go back
and find everyone
as you’d left them, as though
it were simply the following day,
as though the genocide
hadn’t happened, had been
only a nightmare, and you could 
find them at home again, tell your brothers
to lower the volume, help
your mother put away the groceries,
call your father inside before dinner
was ready, feed
the kitten, take a soft brush
to your sister’s hair
as you’d done the evening before
and the evening before that.