wave of sorrow

 got out of the truck  stacked  full of bottled water  confiscated from the supermarket and  food from  town  Red Cross storage , truck filled up so hard that it barely made it up the hill to the place where the policeman on duty just waved and shouted  you can set up  over there by the border crossing but one truck is not going to be enough  you girl go down to the border guards and call someone to send more.  thought he was stupid because  truck was  fullest,  to the brim.  

 closed the door. turned towards where he indicated the border  was and  looked down and froze and started crying.  heat was so intense that  a tear would dry out for the time it took for a tear to descend from the eye to the edge of the face.  the mind started to grasp what  eyes were looking at. 

 tried to see where it ended  - the human inside needed to know that this inhumanity  somewhere stopped, needed to find and hold onto  a tangible konjec  screen  to  erase away  endless suffering  creeping its way across the plain towards us. but I found no limit to the boundless horizon of pain  spreading. 

only flatland underneath, and  road straight as an arrow spearing  for miles. and miles. but  no road at all could be seen. every inch of where it was supposed to be visible  was covered with continuous  stream  of people, vehicles, cattle slowly moving. silence deafened the ears as if all sound   was somehow muted by  all the grief this trail of tears carried.

up close, every smallest speck of this map was inked over with a human being. hungry, thirsty, abused and hopeless after days on the road being bombarded, shelled, being killed.

I do not remember faces that accompanied  hands that reached out  for  food and water..

***

I remember

 face of shellshocked baby   born  in the back of the bus  that never got to touch the soft lining of the cradle basket  mother had prepared.  

 face of grandfather  lifted from his deathbed  now dead and in full rigor mortis  a few cars down  after the bus with the baby.

 their dried mouths open in scorching heat, mouths alive and mouths dead alike were thirsty.

I was 18.

 that newborn baby  whom  mother  fed with water  from the palm of her hand  because there was nothing else I could give her to feed her newborn baby with  is about to turn 18. 

this week.

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