Aboard the Brookes, 1789

Tonight she dreams of her village

Woven in her thoughts as reeds in a basket

Her brown hands clinging to her child

Suckling, its black eyes shimmering

Its mind transported to a space where grass

Grows golden

And air

Fizzles at the touch of fingertips

Grass bends beneath her feet

Ravens soar low

Seduced by the strings of a kora

She wanders to the clearing

Where trees hang low in slumber

Where time whispers of a wilderness

No number branded

To that lion

Roaring in the hot wind

Only, the stench of dead meat

She shudders

As a young gazelle lays docile,

Striped eyes watching vultures

Descend

At dawn, she saves the bones.

Published in Emerge Literary Journal on October 2, 2012

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