One shot fired into open air—

As heavy curtains
Draw dark corners
Into our house,
We turn away and run .

Two shots fired into open air—

The empty walls
Resonate
As we lay under
A new, foreign sky.

Three shots fired into open air—

We try to forget-
What is now history
We walk down the streets
With a name in an unfamiliar
Tongue
And our heads bent

Last shot fired into open air—

Our necks forced down,
One of us is wailing;
Two of us in silence-
Nothing avails.

Because
We are a shade darker
than their soils
And there’s a cloth on our heads-
Screaming.