Syrian Girl Crossing the Border from Greece
       

The road, as I recall, was a pitted moonscape of chalk.
They came in a rush the last time, stun grenades in hand.
True friends stab you in the front, they say. I remember, once, being chased
by a black dog, August, an inch of lime in my lungs.
I lost my doll down a steep ravine; father clutched my slender arm.
Times, down an embankment, there's an apple tree with dust-covered fruit;
tastes sweet to your mouth, your razor-edged teeth.
Judge things just like a market scale: so many corpses
on one side, the living on the other. Judge things,
every single ocean; the earth, this ball of string unravelling.

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Copyright © 2019 Rustin Larson All rights reserved
from Collateral Damage
Glass Lyre Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission