Suicide Cliff / Project Poem-A-Day: Day 13
As warships approach on the horizon,
he flees north toward the jungle with his wife
and children in tow. Not soldiers of
Hirohito’s army, they were never trained
to handle the stress of torture or
escape. There was, of course, resentment
from their island home, thrown their direction.
This family, a band of colonizers; maybe
living peacefully here was still an act
of violence. There will be too many stories
to tell: grandfathers who exploded hand
grenades against their chests while their
descendents held them tight, braced for
impact; infants thrown against mountainsides
to save them; young mothers who closed
their eyes as they walked off the edge of
the cliff, straight drop into the ocean. There
will be no memorial to the story of his family,
except decayed floating corpses. Reasons
for war are too numerous; he thinks:
“We are the reasons against; the ones
nobody remembers.”