Can you feel the heat from where you are?
Can you hear the cries echo through the empty air?
Can you hear the ringing of the bells, telling you to run;
Run for your life, take nothing with you?
Blistered feet. Sweating pain and fear.
You hold on to your children; their feet
Small and slow and fatigued, and their eyes watered
By the smoke and horror, glinting red and yellow from
The fires licking at the starless skies, consuming all
Of your past, all the futures that you’ll never know.
Still, you run, deep into the night. This scorching red night.
The fires now behind you, but the sticks and stones
Now in front, held by those you used to call your neighbour.
Swinging, hurtling in the air, the whistling drowning out the crying—
What do you do? What could you do? Neighbours no more.
You plead, for what else is there to do. You beg and kneel
For your children that they might see daylight past this black night.
You keep your eyes wide open; you do not feel
Your skin darken; you do not cry.
You take it all, to give them time to run and hide,
To run into the night so they might find the light.
A thunder cracks somewhere on this dry night. Then
You feel a wetness running down your spine
You recline, your eyes stare up at the blackened skies but
There you see stars
Blinking. And their faint white lights begin
To consume the dark. And when your limbs
Do not move again, and your eyes, when they do not blink,
You say a prayer for . . .
Gutter Galley 