By Britt Munro
last week I watched a toddler
pinned like a pale starfish to a hospital floor as blood pooled from his knees
the floor was dirty
his eyes twisting in panic through a roomful of strangers ‘Baba! Baba!’
yesterday the camera landed on a woman’s face or, part of a face
the bone caved in, a hollow where the eye should be already swelling yellow, green
Please help her
said her son
please, please
she needs help
Last night the voice of six year old Hind
trembling over the phone
‘come take me. please come take me’
alone in a car with the bodies of her uncle, her cousin, her family surrounded by snipers
‘I am scared of the dark. It is getting dark. Please take me’ That was the last thing we heard
This morning a television interview,
the anchor poses a question from her polished studio to a journalist standing in the mud
his helmet nods forward
onto the mic he is holding with both hands
nods again
and he collapses on air
as we sit stunned by empty space
I have stopped working. One day my body refused. You call and say:
I am being idealistic
I am being dramatic
I am not attached to reality
Whatever it is that makes lattes and lunch and the weather more real
to you
than genocide
Terrifies me.
