Ann Chadwell Humphries
A Child’s Summer In Syria
In the refugee camp his mother cobbles
a meal of one egg for him
chews with him for company
her mouth dry as the sands.
Needs no mirror,
it is enough to see his eyes hollowed by hunger.
ISIS allows no childhood.
Her boy must be a man to walk her to market.
She covers all but her eyes
flecked in gold—the only gold he will inherit.
Those eyes, their eyes forced at gun point
to witness an execution on the town square.
She whispers God help us.
At one time, she dreamed for him
a summer like his American cousins,
lost in long afternoons in libraries and museums.
She lay those dreams with cast-off shoes and suitcases.
Now his concerns are snipers and surveillance.
He learns in schools painted black
that One gun + one = two guns.
Militias promise him money and immortality.
Is it any wonder
half the children in Syria do not speak?
Cannot bring themselves to words?
Ann Chadwell Humphries’s have appeared in Jasper Magazine and on The Comet, the bus system of the Central Midlands Regional Transit Authority in Richland and Lexington counties in the Columbia metropolitan area of South Carolina (an initiative of Columbia’s inaugural poet laureate, Ed Madden). Winner of a 2017 Into the Fire scholarship from The Sun magazine and recipient of a Jasper Magazine Emerging Voice award, she lives and writes in Columbia, SC.
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