At Least in Heaven There’s Food.

after Ghouta

She was building bread when the building was bombed, a fighter jet or gasoline tank, kneaded to a flat cake.

Her dough would never take shape, bake to a crust, be cut and shared and filled, wrapped around spiced meat

and veg. Covered in dust that might have been flour, her dough was lost in debris, her world burnt before the timer,

before the plate was even hot, so her tears score the loaf of her face, the bleeding wound of a hungry mother.