Reality
Cross-legged on a couch
The shelter’s basement holds me
The couple sits in front of me
Prepared to share.
Griselda’s brown cheeks
Soaked in salty tears,
Pacho comforts her shoulders,
Clearly holding back the weeping.
The worn-down houses
Gathered all around
This family resided in.
The dirt streets
And unclean water
But this village
Was their home.
Governmental authority surround
Screaming for a brother-in-law
Carrying AK47s
Shooting loudly against the ground.
He is taken,
They kill him.
One relative that deals,
See something,
Say something,
Hear something
They don’t like,
They’ll take the worst revenge.
A family is tortured.
So next a sister disappears.
She’s gone forever.
And it’s clear where she’s gone,
And who took her
To where her body now rests.
Another sister is shot,
Right in front of her family.
Alive in the musky kitchen,
Then lying limp on the dirt floor.
Then two son-in-laws
Refuse to go along
As the men say they can deal.
They are tortured to death.
By which method is unsure.
They torture many ways.
They have large guns,
They have rusty knives,
And every cruel thing imaginable.
There’s even a lion’s den.
Griselda wails.
Later on the authorities,
Or the Cartel,
They are all the same,
Come back to the village.
“Everyone out”
They scream.
The family runs,
Fleeing.
The call comes.
It’s a neighbor.
“They said the house looked nice,
Now it’s burning to bits.”
One can imagine
The distraught silence
Between the line.
The final straw,
Their daughter disappears.
12 hours.
The phone rings.
“We found your daughter.”
The police chuckle.
Secretly they hope
It won’t be her,
She then may be
Still alive.
But it’s her.
Her body is swollen,
Clearly with rape,
And a sexualized killing.
The sobbing,
It becomes so much.
The words are muffled,
But they continue.
And what do you do
But sit there
And listen on?
It’s obvious now,
They must flee
Or they will just kill
One at a time.
They form a pack of 11.
Running all over Mexico,
City to city.
But it’s hard to hide
When the cartel
Relies on the government
Every movement can be traced.
And we turn our heads,
Pretending that it’s fine.
Government giving to government money
To keep our ties
And we all act blind.
Now they have nowhere else to run.
They flee across the imaginary line.
Soon they’re stopped
By men in uniform.
They tease them.
“We know you’re just here
for the American dream.
Asylum is the new popular thing.
Don’t you know you’re illegal?”
“Go home.
Don’t you know
That everything is fine?”
We tell them they mean nothing.
This problem so large,
I feel powerless and helpless
As they sit in front of me.
I play with their children,
I clean the shelter,
But as they look at me
I feel ashamed of my American self.
I feel as though I’m mocking their misery.
What can I do for them?
An issue larger than me,
A story so painful
It went from numbers
To reality.
So maybe,
I make it real.
Maybe I share this truth,
Maybe I share their story.
I beg you to notice them.
I beg you to recognize their pain,
Free yourself from these blind American notions.
But we sit and stare
Not knowing
Reality.
