TERRIFIED

by Marsha Owens

Image adapted from Scott Brundage Illustration.

Who are you? roared the Cyclops.

I’m terrified, I whispered back.

And well you should be, Cyclops said, because it’s like snakes in the baby’s crib.

We are babies, you know, we haughty Americans, two-year olds running around aimlessly, peeing our pants, little boy babies pulling their diapers down to gawk at their penises, all self-absorbed, too young to understand how grown-up 21st Century countries behave, grown-up men and women, you know, the ones who build high-speed rail, and grow a belief system that says YOU, you, and you, all of you will be educated and be able to pay for your blood pressure medicine and be able to have food enough, and YOU, you, and you will live in houses, unlike stray dogs scrounging downtown, still some say YOU, you and you are undeserving because you don’t pray to our father who is in heaven, you don’t speak English, you wear a scarf on your head, you walk with a limp, you run away from bullets shot at your back.  Yes, YOU . . . be afraid, feel the dead of the darkest night, guiding stars dimmed, voices of reason gone underground, black faces smashed, bodies dumped on the trash heap beside McDonald’s wrappers, throwaways, mountains of loss, and the red truck sits in the yard outside my window, says nothing, all metal and strong.

Marsha Owens lives and writes in Richmond VA. #Resist