Somewhere in the Middle East After One War Ended
by Shirani Rajapakse | |
Child in the classroom unable to speak. Staring at the space in front silent to the teachers urging. Mouth refusing to shape words that don't come out, they died, crumbled to dust and got lost in the sands swirling not so very long ago. What thoughts hold her back afraid to open lips that might howl out secrets best left hidden amidst the ruins piled up like garbage? Numb to the people, deaf to the voices moving around, she hears strange noises in her mind deafening the songs trying to rise up from a corner where she stored them for safe keeping, to make her smile. Gunshots in the street, the heavy fire of machine guns in the dark of the night, a river roaring through nonstop taking with it the trees uprooted, buildings collapsed. Flares lighting up the sky as she hid under the bed seeing neon signs flash across the sky through a hole in the roof that brought in the sun during the day, hot and burning, like the sting of the bullet in her mother's chest. The guns are silenced for the moment, only the distant low hum of sporadic fire in some other town not so far away. People walk the streets unafraid, go about their work like nothing ever happened. The past erased. Yet the guns inside her head continue to fire volley after volley as she struggles to live each day. ~ Copyright © 2019 - Shirani Rajapakse Published: 4/11/19 · Author's Page · Next Poem |