Corrupted Innocence

In the deadening stillness of cease-fire, Abdul 

looks for his toys in the rubble. Basira digs 

for simple trinkets coveted in a box under her 

bed in nameless bits and pieces called home.

Yasmin, 6, in Gaza City, has endured three wars 

in her lifetime.  She wonders, without emotion, 

where she will lay tonight. Awake or asleep, she 

lives the fear of wolfish wounds, nowhere safe.

These children are lucky to be the living dead, 

always in war, cooped chickens who can’t escape, 

ignorant of fresh air. Four cousins playing near 

the harbor, two brothers in a taxi with grandma, 

one four-year-old and his eight-year-old brother 

inside their house, a three-year-old playing with dad 

in the family garden, and a boy and father going 

to mosque – all dead before this brief pause 

in the war as if snuffed between cigarettes. Young 

global nomads bicycle bombed-out streets, kick 

rag balls outside makeshift medical tents, feed 

beat-up dolls with pretend food to play out their fate.        

© Patsy Asuncion, 2016

Destruction of Gaza
Photo by gloucester2gaza
from Wikimedia Commons