I am getting back into the creative writing thing, something I enjoyed a lot as a child and teenager.

I put it aside for journalism. These days, I return to my first writing love, and one morning I wrote this text.

It is a poem of thoughts and images that came up when I was watching the news and remembered interviews I made.

 

"Caravan"

Our weeping skies and calloused earths we leave behind

Our midnight serenades and drunkard beatings 

Our first breaths, first steps, first melodies of words 

First funerals of marigolds, bread, candles and tequila

First mango kisses

Behind we leave them in the mud of heavens and hells

The ramshackle huts we used to call our homes

Shelters no more, but traps with bullet peppered walls

Dry blood stains in our sons' and brothers' clothes

Gory threat of human flesh

Chopped and packed in slashed black plastic bags of death on our door steps

We now only cross with pounding hearts and rattling bones

We're hoisting on our backs the burden of a land's mirage that no one promised us

We're following our dreams of golden light in our curious children's eyes

We're putting all our hope in phantasms of their skipping feet

Princess skirts with silver dust for our girls

And for their brothers carefree ballgame cheers

We step into darkness before dawn 

Surrendering our fate into a stranger's dirt and blood stained hands

We wrap our babies closer to our bodies

Teenage daughters shrink under the gaze of our ferry man 

We stand up straight determined not to sacrifice pride, dignity and love

Prints of the elders' last touch to our cheeks are burning on our skin 

Their whispered prayers will haunt us far beyond the journey's unknown finish line

We are freight in horse trade vessels growling through the night

We are cramped in weathered steal containers filled with human fluids of dispair

We pray on desert grounds to the one wearing the crown of thorns

We stumble, bushes scratching at our feet and thighs

Towards a never promised peaceful land

A place with oceans that seem wider than the ones at home

A place with seagulls crossing borders easily

Spreading their wings before a sky so blue it hurts our eyes

A place where we'll build castles in the wind that's tugging at our hearts

With an invisible pledge engraved over the entrance gate 

That in this home our families shall be happy, healthy, safe and free 

 

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