Maimed Innocence
by Odin Roark

The irony of being a war orphan,
escaping from a burning village
and the massacre of parents, the
camp to camp of refuges,
the brutal toll of walking
from incessant ethnic cleansing,
more villages afire, to border crossing
on top of more border crossings,
country to country,
war against anyone looking
like they might be different,
especially whose who appear
with freedom’s will…

...even though there is but more smoke to escape beyond,
through fighter “recruitment or die,’
all for new regimes of “eye for an eye” mentality,
the inevitable coup d’état, coup de grace,
the weeping of mothers,
the shriek of so many children caught
in flaming updrafts of inextinguishable flames.

What keeps such innocence breathing
among the numbness,
the haunting scourge of other maimed
and barely alive escapees.

So many disguises invented to become transparent,
invisible to torture, tricks learned in perfecting
feigned death, stupidity, deafness, blindness,
talking as a girl, playing native, foreigner,
masquerading in love, without love,
crazy, sane, loyal, traitor. The horror
of it all.

Frightened, courageous, sad, happy,
maintaining “I’m okay. Really, I’m okay.”

Oh, the curse of adulthood for such lost innocence,
realizing all that kept the body breathing
conspires now to suffocate mind and heart with sadness.