On a Street in Aleppo

How can you beg
  forgiveness
watching from the safety
  of distant shores and cultures
while a father pushed back
                the hand
  holding plastic to cover
           his dead son
covered in the dust of shattered buildings
the grey fine powder of exploded lives
   blood red around his ears eyes closes
his son                               who looks
like my son
  the same soft curve of cheek
 
a city falls
      a star
            a life
the way a bullet does, a missile
carving
   its trajectory
         to join
             the earth.
Tweets from
people with foreknowledge
  of their violent deaths
    down to the day
armies pushing into streets  neighborhoods
already bombed to rubble, ruin
steel structures sagging
    like clotheslines
 
That morning did the family huddle
   together
in the corner of what used to be
        their home: among the ruin
pieces
  of a kitchen, and a bed, a picture frame
    (and dreams)
and did the father let himself steal
               a thought
of happiness, that he still had
    his family
          his son
a stolen necessary gratitude
             for life
that doomed himself
             to grief
a twisting sinking horror
the whole of buildings, rubble ruin
  focused on his child’s still and lifeless face?
Did he hear the screams the shells
  splitting air and worlds
    like any other day that year but know
this time
  it came for him
          for him?
Did the father yell
          Run!         even after
he felt the lurch
       quick suffocation
             a heart exploding
         his
               his.