Darfur: A Wound Still Open

04 VERSES IN THE WAKE

Darfur opens—
a wound the sun keeps trying to close.
A girl stands in the heat, holding her silence
like a bird too frightened to lift its wings.
The air breaks against the girl’s face.
Someone’s scream from the night before
still clings to her hair like smoke.
She holds her silence the way a body
holds a bruise—tender, hidden,
already turning black.

A horse’s hoofprint fills with wind.
The boy born today is rinsed in dust
because the water is gone.
His eyes open—two dimmed stars—
learning the shape of this world.

Grandmothers braid hope
into whatever hair the war left untouched.
A classroom appears:
one tarp, one stick, the alphabet
scratched into the earth’s thin skin.

Night falls—a dropped curtain.
Mothers hum stories salvaged
from the edge of forgetting.
Children lie down in rows,
their bodies tiny shadows
the world keeps stepping over.

In the dark, a single thought
pushes its way into the air,
shaking as it rises:

How do you raise a child toward sunrise
when every direction still smells of smoke?

Even as the world turns its face away,
truth keeps scraping its nails
against the world’s closed door.