Leila A. Fortier – II
I am crushed by the weight of a sadness that even water will not wash away~ The sea betrayed my innocence~ Snatched away my song…mocking me~ I am no longer a lover~ Mentally displaced and sick with worry~ I am haunted by the faceless~ Their white-knuckled clawing into the earth that could not save them~ The only remains of land and living are found beneath fingernails of corpses~ Bile filled lungs where air should have taken communion~ Tides of grief swallowed me where my arms failed in reaching~ You chide my pretty dreaming~ My futile attempts to wring some kind of magic into the mouths of the thirsty~ But I realize this is a helpless kind of thirst, and there is no hope to be found in this poetry~ There is no more magic in this sea of murder~ All charms drowned here and I know not how to raise the dead.
* Sendai was one of the regions of eastern Japan directly hit by the 3/11 tsunami.
