Day 544

from a photograph

This sister wanted to be a writer.
This sister wanted to be an artist.
Now the writer writes
about her sister’s killing — crushed
by the wall of the room
she’d been sleeping in.  Now
the artist is dead, who drew,
days before the bombing,
a tree bare of leaves, a brilliant sun
shining behind its naked
branches, numbers
naming the year to come.
New year that could have been
filled with possibilities, now
carved forever in stone
over the grave of the girl
who slowly, carefully,
penciled its numbers.  How
can she be gone, who lit up
the house like the sun
she drew?  How
could her vibrant
thirteen-year-old body
be bare of leaves?