Keep that rag. I have to stop crying

Did they chase his mother

He can't remember

Don't throw out that empty valise

You can fill it with rags or pages

Don't throw out that rag 

You can find an odor in it or soak it with tears or breath

Don't throw out that piece of paper

You can fill it with the memories

You don't have

Or you can fill it with the words she tells you

Carefully 

Is that a conch or a train

In the dark morning

Does it matter

What it says is:

Alert!

A time is breaking

Did they round up his brother in one of their roundups?

What does he think?

No one to tell him

No one to tell him what his mother thought, running

Down into a ditch

Thorny? Sandy? 

Her rubber flipflops thin, coming undone, slipping off

Thinking of the hate she felt for his connections?

Did his father drown 

In that outhouse in Mullativu

Or some village his mother says they came from 

Because he was sick and fell?

He doesn't know

Or did they throw him in

And he fell into that hell

Or are his suspicions 

Suspicions he'll never answer true

That 

Father was beheaded first

And lasting tale that he was sick

Lost his balance

Fell in

How do you "fall" into a squatter so narrow so that you drown?

What did his mother think

On the six day flight to Wattala 

Refuge with Colombo family a last resort 

The sound of the crows can't answer

The roosters won't answer

The Murugam Temple can't answer

The Pilliyar Temple can't answer 

The Kali Kovil can't answer

The speeding buses won't answer

Your own breathing can't answer

How about the groaning of your mother at night, or this time in the morning

Or the moan of the ponsala monks

Those orange robed chanting patriots

Who storm your place with their ownership 

I have to stop crying

It's not my country

Not my people 

Not my tragedy 

Why is it I feel so close?