Without breaking all my limbs

Without breaking all my limbs was the term Amara used

When he said to his nine siblings

After their mother died

You let me stay in this house and eat and live and grow without breaking all my limbs

With some overseas and some dead by kidney or liver the rest grew angry and jealous of the adopted man, now forty, when their mother died and took away the house he lived in with her, caring for her the long years after his father

Instead he went to sleep in a school building

Built by Belgians 

With refugees from the north

And displaced families from all around

And people whose identity papers had burnt or were stolen or were left behind so no one had rights to redress or resettlement Singhala families, Tamil families, Muslim families. Amara the one single man the rest with children who call him "old uncle,"

Using the building at night as a sleeping place

And in the day clearing out, making room for the government kindergarten. 

Not all of your limbs were broken

When your parents were killed in the east in the first act of terror on the island

You were six maybe five

You knew your given name

You hid in the forest

You slept in the trees

You were different a stranger and hounded and used and chased and threatened and enslaved and attacked but not all of your limbs were broken 

and you could move

and you moved west

and you kept sleeping in the trees

and you kept being chased 

and you kept moving

and you ended in Mihintale 

where you slept in the street

and were found

Your adoptive father a healer

One who took no money

One who diagnosed on the spot

One who knew the herbs and soils

One who gave you his surname

And work

And when there was food, food

An old man already

And so many children

Your kind mother never had enough

you told me

Not even a sambol

As hard as you worked for them

And you sold lotus on the steps to Mihintale Dagoba

And you worked in the fields 

And you worked as a laborer

As a builder

As a carrier

As a helper

As a "waiter" 

As a tea bringer to the cultivators

As a carrier of sacks of pesticide powder

As a cultivator yourself 

Bending in killing heat

All your limbs weren't broken