She’s five, tells the interviewer that she was beautiful
once. Once, in the days before the war, before this,
I had full cheeks, a bigger face. I was so beautiful, she says.
She gestures with her hands, smiles at the camera.

The camera keeps rolling. A nine-year-old wears a bandana. 
She holds the strands of hair at the back of her head. 
She’s bald at the front. I had the most beautiful hair, once. 
But it all fell out. Her mother says she’s scared all the time.

The camera pans out to two boys on the floor. The older boy
comforts his younger brother, whose head is in his lap.
He’s stroking his hair, rubbing his sobbing brother’s back.
They are both younger than four.

Elsewhere, there are limp limbs, blown off body parts, toddler
skulls folding in on themselves. There are shredded torsos. 
Embedded shrapnel, shards of glass.  A boy on the hospital
floor. His mother tries to rouse him as he gasps. Gasp

after gasp from his seesaw chest. 
His final breath. Another live death. There, 
another small body covered with a plastic sheet. 
A pair of pink rollerblades still on her feet.

The camera’s memory full, another takes its place.
Back with the girl who misses her full face.
She sucks in her cheeks, says war made her ugly.
I’m ugly because of corpses I’ve seen she says.

Abeer Ameer’s poems have appeared widely in journals including The Rialto, Magma, The Poetry Review, and Poetry Wales. Her debut poetry collection, Inhale/Exile (Seren, 2021), which includes stories of her Iraqi forebears, was shortlisted for Wales Book of the Year 2022. She is currently working on a second collection and shares readings on her YouTube channel.