I Got Up at Five A.M. Because I Had to Write This Poem

The Refugee

She is only two, hardly old enough to understand.

In any language.

She sleeps on the floor of what used to be

a big-box store, with hundreds of others.

But she doesn't really sleep.

Mostly she wanders around, crying

and screaming for her mama,

who was told they were taking her away for a bath.

She pounds her fists on the floor, inconsolable,

with terror in her eyes.

I try to give her some old toys they supplied for us,

but she is not interested. Her tears will not stop.

I want to hug her, cuddle her, rock her,

tell her it will be all right, but I'm not allowed.

It's against the rules.

Why did I take this job?

I want to say,

This is not who we are,

but that would be naive,

when I know we wrested children

from their mothers on plantations,

sent them to their deaths

on a thousand-mile snow-covered trail,

put them in a desert enclosed in barbed wire

because they looked like the enemy.

This is not who we should be.

This two-year-old's only crime was having a mama

who was scared enough for their safety to flee

to a country where she thought things would be better,

who didn't know that the laws would be so cruel.

The children try to sleep tonight,

on a brightly lit, hard floor,

with shabby blankets,

and a big mural of the President

who scowls down on them.