Air

each Palestinian child killed

is someone I will never know

& though you might say

I wouldn’t know them anyway

because before they’d have grown up

I’ll be dead, still, we might have exchanged

fleeting bursts of air, theirs

blown here from Rafah in Gaza, mine

flown there from Salisbury in Vermont

world travelers, sibling orphans

they bombed into fragments

or found frozen in rain-soaked tents

I shriveled inside worn garments

we who die in our killing times