Dust lifts from the valley road, and fear comes like a shadow
with the Talib soldiers in their green American truck.
Last week they came and took our donkey down the track
to the valley, whipping him along the way, tying him to the truck.
They burned my neighbor. Now they come to us, tell my husband
I will cook for their patrol daily.
Afterwards, the lines of his face moved into sorrow. Now he hides
in the hills all day with our sheep and oldest daughter.
CRACK of a gunshot against the mountain, and the tomato I cut slips
into the pan. Fear crawls my back, I cry into the smoke of the cookfire.
There is no time to spread our few plates over the carpet under the cedar.
Pepper and cumin for the rice still sits in clay jars.
As they come, I want to run into our house against the hill.
Only the tea is ready.
“Bakhana ghwaram, bakhana ghwaram,” I start forcing from
my breathless chest, “Forgive me, forgive me.”
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Steven Croft is the author of New World Poems (Alien Buddha Press, 2020). He has lived in Afghanistan. His poems have appeared in Willawaw Journal, San Pedro River Review, The New Verse News, North of Oxford, Anti-Heroin Chic, Poets Reading the News, and other places.
Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona.
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