A Girl From Hiroshima
That was the fifth year of my school.
The streets were full of wild flowers.
On the backyard, Tommy was playing.
Father, a mechanic had gone to work.
Mother was boiling water for tea.
A lonely kite in the sky,
made small movements, as though,
tired of being in the air, it wanted a drop.
At the garden in front of me,
a butterfly was caressing a rose.
Next to the rosebush, a small cobweb danced in the air.
The spider had long died, mending it.
It was a hot day, sister was at school.
Later, a flash of light came.
Red, brighter than the sun.
Tommy’s leg was in the air.
Father never returned back.
Mother never woke for tea.
My nine years old sister became blind.
Flames poured over me.
Death came in a never-ending string.
I survived looking at the bodies of children,
floating on Ota river.
Others, who had died, left shadows on the walls,
and nightmares that would follow me for years.
I am an old woman now.
It seems I have never grown,
since that day,
when Hiroshima had turned into a furnace.
When the birds had fallen from the sky like stone,
and death came cheap.
Whenever I see the wild flowers,
the faces of those children, come with a force.
I feel my father coming back,
any moment, from the bend of the road.
Sister, returning back from school.
The garden full of flowers again,
like that year when the butterflies came,
right next to my window.
I still feel like that child again,
whom they wanted to kill.
