We're on the verge,
we inmates and captors,
of mutual understanding -
a riot without resistance
impends.
it's been a decade and a half
since we began dividing
each separation a burial,
building layer after layer
with hands misguided
to cover the Wound with dry dirt and ashes
as if by concealing
we could heal
by suppressing
we could control what was impossible
to tame or contain or suffocate
but a voice still rises
beneath all that dirt
a child's eyes, leaking red and bewildered
deprived of comfort, except in the warmth
of restriction, which infants crave
and against which
the rest of us exhaust ourselves in combat
We thought she'd be a statue
by now, petrified by time and pressure and abandonment.
She was a story,
but not ours.
A myth,
but not heroic,
Timeless,
but without substance
We thought she'd fade away.
What use could such a shadow serve
our purpose,
which is survival at any cost.
She enraged us by persisting.
So we buried her,
beneath every failed attempt at transformation
15 years misunderstanding
She is the root
of our family tree,
and what good is it to bury roots,
which thrive in the dirt
while we in the sunlight are blind,
and she in the soil is voiceless,
one resenting the other
and the other nourishing the ones who curse her.
This is an apology,
and it's only a beginning -
Years of abuse
demand decades of repair.
but her voice still rises
and we captors - for shame -
have begun
to yield.
