The woman carrying her life, / who passed by a moment ago, calls out / from the next street and someone answers, / but not to her.

I should have begun with that warning sound, / I should have begun when the sun crossed the town of Houla, / Syria, brushing the bodies of the massacred children. They look / like carefully wrapped cocoons. // Here, time slips down / the side of a building as if it were only a shadow.