• Damage

    Rains come, stalking us; the dust
    that rose around our feet now heavy with drops,
    it pulses like blood between our toes.
    We tread the path of those who came
    before us, dragging
    tired feet toward salvation and
    a future. Any
    future.
    Our legs tremble,
    stiffen in the cold yet
    bend beneath us.
    Yours bend too far; the red mud
    grabs at your bony ankles
    and pulls them from under you.
    Fallen into the sorrow of thousands, you lay
    still and pale as a corpse,
    until the water’s chill pulls your tiny figure into
    a ball and spasms of exhaustion wrack
    your thin frame.
    I see you there, but I cannot watch;
    I fall down beside you but cannot take your hand in comfort.
    The rain leaves us defeated in the muck,
    faces stained with grimy tears;
    we unclench our limbs and move stiffly onward.
    It is all we can do to continue
    our march to the border, away from painful memories
    and a life that is no longer ours.
    I know you are ashamed of you weakness.
    I see it in our mother’s determinedly raised chin—it looks
    so old on your face.
    I see it in her reaching neck, straining from
    your shoulders
    as if your head knows where you must go
    and has resolved to make it there, even if
    it has to drag the slow, broken body along.
    That head of yours will compel us all the way to the camp,
    to where a future lies waiting for us—
    the same future that waited to receive every lost soul
    before us, running from memories and Jinjaweed soldiers.
    A future we don’t even know if we want—after all,
    what could any future hold for us?
    What can a future be
    when everything we ever cherished has been taken from us?
    What can it be but pain, sorrow, longing?
    What can it be
    but a long wait to rejoin the spirits of our family
    and fall in line with those of the hundreds of thousands
    who preceded us in this gruesome journey?