Listen to the world’s best poetry read out loud.

She was baking bread

when the soldiers came.

Her children ran to her.

She held the two of them,

one against each hip, the dough

on her fingers stuck to their hair.

Two days and she never washed

her hands, kept thinking of the dough

still rising in the kitchen.

Now the soldiers are saying things,

jabbing at the air with guns,

fingers too near the triggers.

She thinks the guns are like

heavy limbs in the hands

of these wild-eyed boys.

If they let us go, we will

walk south, she tells herself,

walk south with everyone else.

We may not sleep tonight

nor find bread but, Insha’allah

we will stay alive.

With her hands full of children,

she moves through the space

where her door used to hang.

Her right hip rotates, lifts

her right foot, her left hip tilts

the left foot follows.

The turn, the swirl of her dress,

the squeeze of her hands

on her children’s palms.

The turn, left instead of right,

the sniper’s eye holding her heart

at the centre of his lens.

The moment of turning left

instead of right, the arc of a weapon

across the wide screen of this moving picture.

This woman walking, this woman

walking with her children, walking

the wrong way, too close to the red line.

This woman, her hands’ grip loosened

with traces of dough on her fingers,

remnants in her children’s hair.