She thinks of Aleppo

She watches the sea twinkling blue and green

and the boats brighten in the small harbour

as if they have heard rumours of sun and wind.

The mastheads quicken and wave the wind in

to the sound of ropes against metal and wood.

She asks me, Do vegans’ bodies rot more quickly?

She tilts her head back to the buttermilk sky,

Gulps a scalded tang of salt and surf and sun.

An agile yachtsman steers his boat out to sea

With the easy familiarity of an old postman

Gripping the handlebars of his bicycle.

She says, What counts is the living, the eating,

the drinking, the sleeping, the laughing, the loving

that every soul needs. A fisherman unloads

a sheen of striated fish from his blue-and-white boat.

Sapped wills flap blue and black light in the box.

On the shore a hulk is splayed open like a gutted fish.

She says, When I saw them crawling in the square

they looked like lizards dipped in dust but it was the children,

their skin burned off and their bodies broken.

The sweat shines in drops on her forehead and lips,

trickles with her tears in streams down her cheeks.

She watches the white wake of the boat cleaving the water.

She says, We die into the blackness of fainting but the mind

and memory can live on in writing. She thinks of Aleppo.