A Child’s Gaze
Pools of liquid mahogany beckon,
Drawing me in to their depths.
A thousand reflections dance before me.
I sway with the kaleidoscope.
Fire drips from the sky;
My sweat offers a standing ovation
Heat from sun and smoke from flame
Are the life of your existence.
I dare not touch the water.
Yellow, brown, green, it holds its treasure-box
Beneath a mass of death sentences.
This is the river that nourishes you.
The girl behind me reflects in your dark depths—
Your childhood best-friend.
Once delighted to go swimming each day,
She now sells her body to a tourist.
Shouts from across the rutted street
Cause tremors of ripples to race across your
surface.
Why do the sounds still shock you so?
The drug dealers are at it again.
I smell Mama’s cooking;
You seem to sense it too as the ripples dissipate.
Rice-mush and bean-paste
Are the feast of a king.
Your clouds of yellow shroud
Memories blocked from the world:
Violence, abuse, starvation.
I can sense their haunting presence.
I shrink back at a loss for words.
The kaleidoscope vanishes; I blink.
I step away from your enrapturing gaze,
With a fear that you
are studying me as well.
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