Statistics

(A poem by Sal Godoij.)

Bombs and missiles kill people.

Indifference buries them.

Silence erases their graves.

Statistics save their souls as measurable data

What had they all become?

Not people, but variables and probabilities.

They were real people.

Let’s go inside that house, once a home

Now still-warm ruins.

On the kitchen floor, a cup lies cracked,

The tea it contained dried into a brown moon.

A curtain breathes through broken glass.

Besides blackened beds

Torn children’s shoes

Seems to miss their owners’ little feet.

Where had those children gone?

Those friends, families, neighbours?

Sealing their tombs, not the last spade of earth

But ghost data saved in cluttered servers.