Child of the Universe

I can’t dry your tears.

I can’t find your mother in the crystal rubble.

I can’t cradle her cracked skull.

I can’t shield your doe eyes from shrapnel.

I can’t soothe your skin from white phosphorous blooms.

I can’t keep you as my own.

I can’t make you leave Aleppo.

I can’t smuggle you out of scorched streets.

I can’t teach you the constellations through smoke plumes.

I can’t reveal your fate at the bottom of a broken teacup.

I can’t control your seasoned screams

or even fetch a pail of water.

I can’t sing you a lullaby to the unsteady beat of barrel bombs.

I can’t tell you to close your eyes as I can’t close mine either.

I can’t bake baklewa for you without orange blossom water and walnuts.

I can’t cook rice for you without controlled flames.

Or give you sweets without bees without flowers without hives.

Pour milk without an udder a breast or formula.

I can’t promise you will survive to write poems and not be bitter.

I can’t paint a peaceful scene for you if war never ends.

I can’t stop the sky falling.

I can’t stop the rain stinging your open wounds.

I can’t dull the blinding sun

or kill for you.

I can’t comb your dusty hair.

Tie your tattered shoes.

Replace the love that once held you.

Collage your face into a portrait.

I can’t face your infinite stare.

I can’t hand you some sugar, some rocks.

This distance is not light-years but oceans and yet

I can’t reach you this year or the next.