Today's poem is by Samodh Porawagamage

First Bomb Away
       

A bomb escaped
leaves not a bang, but a frozen
silence in the ears.

Once we lived
so close to too many
to know the difference.

One of the worst took
a school baseball team
on their way to play
for an easy away win.

Then they were so regular
that everybody lost count

and were suspicious of all
women "with child."

That's how they prey on
your sympathy, the President
thumped his chest. We voted.

Mum and dad worked the same hours
half a mile from each other.

Every day they left and returned
on different routes to save me
a parent, just in case.

At thirteen, I had my luck to miss
a doomed bus

when a snotty street kid
selling something like
incense-sticks

blocked my run
to the trafficked bus.

A rival schoolboy
mocked me from the footboard

and I cursed him to fall and break a limb!

Next, a different silence
kept ticking for a decade

for six more
within hours
on Easter

on my lover's birthday.

Happy Birthday, I said
in American comfort.

She pretended not to hear
and cried on my shoulder.

I hid the gift
and never took it out again.

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Copyright © 2024 Samodh Porawagamage All rights reserved
from Becoming Sam
Burnside Review Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission