When caked up, pungent rivers of blood shore up against your front door
When human waste is let out to marshal streets of destruction and woe
When children, frail and forlorn, hold on fiercely to a mother two days dead
When a father, a dying child laying limply in his arms runs to a hospital nowhere near
When a daughter returns to a heap of rubble that was home just ten days before
When that daughter finds the corpse of a child two weeks dead-
So long dead, it hasn’t rated a statistic and even as a belated statistic she cannot tell whether it is a girl or a boy
When the nails from the shells flying precariously close above are as long as your hand
When a child’s brain is bombed out of his head with no reference to superlative metaphor- just a grim litreality
When a brother himself no more than ten is burdened with the weight of a bleeding, burned brother
When over on the hill in the distance the fall of each bomb is celebrated by another pair of brothers
When the head of a girl protrudes from a heap of rubble like an artistic echo of the world’s complicity
When the unborn child listens to their mother wailing for a husband who is never to hear the wailing of his child-
Who closes their eyes and walks away?
And then you realise, squeamishness is a privilege few can afford.