Day 508/Ceasefire Day 38

Overnight, three small children
freeze to death.  No house, no
roof, no warmth but the warmth
of their parents’ bodies, bodies
also fending off the cold.
February.  Rain.  They had come
this far, little ones born
to the wail of drones, lullabies
of falling, shattering; little ones
whose skin was intimate with dust
and the coarseness of blankets
too light, too worn
to shelter them.  They had come
all this way, carried
in the weakened arms
of their mothers.
Back to where they began,
back to what they had 
been carried away from.
All this way, through months
of horror: only to feel their bodies
shut down, organ by tiny organ,
until there was nothing left
in them to resist.  Until
it was death that took them
from their mothers’ arms.
Carried them off.