Destroy everything cried the mothers from their high balconies

wring the streetlights’ necks

make the trees eat dust

dismember the ladder the doll the spider's hammock

The children will play with the Sea

they will learn addition from the corpses piled on the sidewalks

subtraction from decapitated trees

An eye plucked up from the dust for a pistachio ice cream cone for a glass of hibiscus juice–

the merchant on the Corniche trades in everything that can be bought and sold

Tanks crossed the Mediterranean

The mothers called the dead and the children to come in before the bombardments

wept on their balconies and on the shoulder of the rain that rained no longer

green hands plucked the basil that startled at every explosion

stuffed the children

Only feathered creatures survive said the mothers

who knitted wings for the children

then pushed them off the balcony railings

Fly, my child

my love

light of my eyes

gathered them up from the asphalt with bruised hearts

replanted them in the garden at the foot of the sorrel that cured colic and calmed fears

Fly into the sun

you'll be a hummingbird when you're ten

a red sparrowhawk feared by the storm when hair grows on your palms

fly through air and blood and you'll become a sniper

The man who fixed pedestrians in his gun-sights

followed the sun's trajectory

his laughter splattered the blood of the sunset

Planning his night in the evening

his fists cried out on single women's doors

the omelette wolfed down standing

he returned to his roof

begged the rain to dilute him to a timid boy

with a diaphanous mother and a grassy house

his name on a cup hanging over the kitchen sink

A relic

the piece of shrapnel rubbed against his jeans

return to the innocence of daisy petals

You love me a little

A lot

Till death…