Photo by Michael Kahn on Unsplash
The blood that stains the petals
is theirs, not ours.
The head that fell, rolling
from another hill,
belongs to them.
The wind of grass and aniseed
carries them away from home.
The bodies writhe with pain
in a language we don’t understand.
The air still smells of fennel—
The flies are yet to arrive.
Yellow flowers seem to fall forever,
strewn about the battlefield,
in clouds of pollen and smoke.
We have put the bodies in a pile,
so that the fennel flowers
see the sun
and bloom again.
It is their mothers
who will fail to meet their reborn
sons, not ours.
Not ours.
It was them who stained the petals
and gave the fields
their iron.
All this runs through my head
as I, too, run
towards the city
beyond the horizon,
beyond the horizon’s horizon.
When the fennel stops,
I can’t—
The fields go on,
as do I.
My breath turns dogged,
my muscles stretch and tauten,
my legs tell me
I have to stop, but
we cannot.
Our legs and wanton
breath march forward,
until I see the gates
and the courtyards
and the buzzing of the
shacks and the roads.
We have made it,
and my message will arrive.
“I have come here
as I die,
to say—
We have survived.”