After Being “Re-Educated”

By Damian Robin

The summer sear was never done, hot downpour did not halt.

The heat was high, they wore their sweat, thick uniforms of salt.

Sleep time never slept, just a comma in a text

That they must read and have reread, this one and then the next.

Like in a coffee roaster, harsh aroma burned and dried;

Bitter hurts ground down, churned up; fractured grits subside

And pile like mountains, roll like rocks, and fall, are lost, are gone,

And realigned, disturbed, hot memories she can’t stand on.

Self-conscious time has settled sand on buried trauma’s head,

Those around no longer jailers, sleepwalkers, or dead.

Now, health has moved into her mind, now, fam’ly time, and meals,

Familiar faces,aren’t wiped out by present danger deals;

But she must still hold to that life to hold to her belief;

For she must make sure martyred lives aren’t swiped by memory’s thief.

Oil painting "Choices" by Xiao Ping