Day 522/Ceasefire Day 52

for Mahmoud Khalil

I am thinking now about a man
walking to his apartment on a March night,
his wife walking with him.  Fishing
for his keys, opening the door — his wife
eight months pregnant — when suddenly
there are men pushing their way inside ahead of them.
Their unborn baby, nearly ready for birth,
shudders inside the womb, feels the fear,
the horror.  I’m thinking about the man’s words
at the protest last spring: firm, gentle.  Stop
the genocide, stop the killing of children.
Stop the complicity of the university, 
the government, the corporations.  Stop. Stop now.
They take him away.  They take him somewhere
unknown, a prison, an undisclosed location; his wife,
his lawyer, aren’t told.  Stop the killing
of children, the killing of babies, he’s
thinking.  He’s thinking about his child,
unborn first child, alive, growing
well, nearly ready to come
into this world after so many thousands
of children have been killed.
The city night cold, early March,
his wife shocked and alone inside the apartment,
the baby stirring, then not stirring, then stirring again.