The Soldier’s Dream

France promises to increase military assistance to Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger as they join forces to battle Boko Haram and the extremists’ campaign across the region’s borders.

—reported in “‘Seven-year-old girl’ kills herself and five others in Nigeria suicide bombing,”  The Guardian, February 22, 2015  

 

 

  

The child has one body and five bodies it holds: the body of eyes, the body of ears, the scent body, the body of tongues, the tactile body of singed hairs. Seedless, the one body is stiff and shrouded in white netting.

 

The child has one body and five black stones, tiny fists with gold wrists pinned over her heart. The child has one body and five small bags of salt pinned to the band round her waist, five glass rattles braided into her hair. The coarse blue salt and jet charms offer protection. The rattles ward off trouble. She stares behind me into the future. She hovers in the air. Around her, the gilded pages of a book rise and fall amid mottled feathers, dirt, and dry leaves. The dirt colors everything red.