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Little Teddy and I, Waiting
by Kristine Ong Muslim
We have seen so much of the world.
It is now all right to remain blind.
So little teddy and I wait inside
our tiny black room.
I stroke little teddy’s fur
matted with flesh torn from my repast.
His golden brown plastic eyes still
stare at the doors of our past lives.They have lied to us about everything,
and I am angry again. Now, there is blood everywhere.
Do they know that we are all born blind and must die blind,
unable to grasp the words that burn our souls to the core?I see the village people in my mind.
Murder and vengeance in their eyes,
they are all heading this way --
their torches burning,
smoke rising into the night sky
to touch the face of the moon
and the surface of its secret black heart.This is the river of our dreams.
Dive in and drown with us.
And this is my little teddy
with me.And I slit my immortal sister’s throat
and burned her little dollhouse
where she shrank and kept
the neighbor’s three kids.
And I hammered shut my father’s coffin.
And I drowned my mother in the well.
Then, hugging little teddy close to me,
I stood that night in front of our great old house.I can see the village people at the clearing now.
Let them come and try to kill us, little teddy.
I’ve seen others try many times before.
But we have lived forever, you and I,
outlived our captors and our creator.
They have lied to us about everything, little teddy.
Now, there is blood everywhere.We listen to their footsteps outside our room.
And we huddle close together.
Little teddy and I, waiting.
© Muslim, 2007