Day 498/Ceasefire Day 28

Our lives are not rubble.
Our lives are the tree-lined avenues
that were here before, and will be here again.
We will walk, we will sit in cafés
and remember how we rebuilt them.
We will find new books to replace
the ones that have gone to dust, new stories
to add to the old ones.  We will not forget:
we will weave the names of our dead
into our own names, into the names
of children yet to come.  We will take the rubble
in our hands, hold it tenderly, lovingly,
because it contains all the things
we have lost; and then use it
to build what we build anew.  
Our hands will be warmed by grief and memory.
Memory and grief and joy will be braided 
into the walls we make, the rugs
we will walk on, the curtains
we’ll part to look out on what
we will have created.