Mercy there are two lives in which i kill you: hold your body close to mine, kiss your frostbitten nose and sing until you stop crying, sing until i am hoarse and my broken voice sounds like mother's, the warmth of your shallow breaths against my neck. i hold you close and muffle your coughs, wonder how mercy could feel so cold. our sister is six, our brother eight, but starving in an alleyway we are all the same: sickness doesn’t know age. we grow weaker, your coughing louder and louder until your little mouth becomes a klaxon screaming death but i will not let go-- your weight in my arms is my anchor. four little birds covered in snow, i hold you close and kiss your brow, our breath mingling in frosted air, palm against palm against palm, our heartbeats slowing to a crippled infant’s crawl as the seconds slip from our mouths. there are two lives in which i kill you: your little feet kicking as i hold you down our only blanket over your face, over your big black eyes, i steal your breath and promise it is mercy until the feeble death rattle of soft bones against my chest subsides. our sister is six, and our brother eight, but on their knees shovelling dirt with a jagged can lid, they are not gravediggers, but farmers. i lay your twisted body down in its shallow grave-- we are farmers, like our parents were, sowing #life from cursed earth, plucking seconds and minutes and hours from a tree that bursts through the snow where you lay. it looks like you; all stunted and small, its branches bent and bruised with the gnarled horror of your wretched body, each swollen knot in the wood a tiny clenched fist battering against god. but we take its fruit all the same, with three mouths to feed instead of four we have a chance. we turn those seconds into hours, into days, into months: every heartbeat a reminder of the way you fought.