An old woman tells, in a flat and quiet voice, how she lost both her children after a bomb. Her daughter dies within a week, the horror of the blast still reflected in her eyes. Her son, covered in keloids, crawls into bed and never gets up. Even as he vomits blood, his last words are meant to comfort: she will go on to live a healthy, ordinary life. The irony is heavy, because she is left alive with only grief.
The speaker barely shows emotion directly. She lists what happened in short, plain statements, and that restraint makes the pain hit harder. The image of her son's body making white smoke is gentle and terrible at once. The closing lines shift to a deer crying in a trap, a sound carried by minyo, a type of folk song. The comparison suggests a grief that is helpless and animal-like, and it leaves the poem hushed, mournful, and unresolved.