Aftershock

I wrote this poem after another devastating earthquake in India. It came to my mind again, after reading that many of the victims of this latest earthquake, in Northern Pakistan and parts of Kashmir, in India, were children.

Aftershock

A child’s forehead,
eyebrows, dark lashes.
Nothing else shows
above the broken pieces
the world flung over her

except one forearm
in a pink sweater:
at the wrong angle,
as if someone had found it
and placed it beside the closed eyes
for company.

Men will dig into the rubble,
free her as tenderly as they can.
Fire will melt the heaviness
from her limbs.
She will rise in smoke
above earth’s dark dream.