POEM: A TIME TO FORGET
By Babatunde Kawthar
I motion through a pool
of bodies
Mothers and sons
Fathers and daughters killed
By rain of drones.
A mass grave erupts
From wrecked homes
We bury families with names
Forever lost
To be remembered
Only as causalities
In numbers and dates
‘Hundreds were killed
On this day’
Of that year when the world watched
In silence without grief.
He says this is the time to forget
To fold our love
Layer life above it
Till it’s lost
In fangled trenches.
I flicker through channels
And I see nothing
Of their pain or destruction
Those families casually erased.
This surely is a time to forget
Our broken hearts
And our cracked world
Along all its fangled edges
Because for now
We seem safe.
