May 25, 2019 Original Poetry, Uncategorized
Fault-Lines
(For The Border-Children)
©May 25th, 2019
By Vijaya Sundaram
You wait.
Hollow as a reed,
Empty as the sky,
You wait, liminal.
Child that you were
Child that you are in a
Childhood that you can
Never again have,
You sit mutely,
Eyes avoiding the big men
With their predator eyes
And cruel teeth, and you crouch
Among silver sheets
Flimsy as yesterday’s dreams,
Your face bruised, rib-cage
Pushing against skin, from your
Heart trying to burst out,
Escape all your confines.
Others among you, like you,
Wait, in a solitude that crushes –
Like an entire ocean
Flattening bodies down
At the bottom of a trench,
So that any breath you take
Isn’t even yours, it’s pure
Mechanics, split from your body.
You wait – for a parent,
Or for the kindness of strangers,
Or warmth, or a kind kiss, but
Now, you know – even as
The weeks and months
Crawl by on bloody knees,
And even as your mind
Collapses under all that weight
Of waiting in absolute solitude –
That you will never find them.
And is there room within
For rage, or for memories of love
Of home, of a mother and father,
Of walking, bruised, footsore, hungry
Across a cactus-riddled desert?
Do you remember a coyote, a fox,
Men with guns, blood-lust in their eyes?
Do you remember the predator
Who seeks your body at night?
Do you obliterate all feeling?
At what cost, survival?
And where in this cold world
Is a warm voice, a soft touch,
A return to love?
Those are the questions
For times of comfort.
Now, you simply lie, or sit,
Or stand, or crouch,
And wait, numb and stunned.
Something will happen.
You might not be there for it.
The fault-lines open wide.
______________________________________