Susan Craig
Boy from Brazil
And the world isn’t moved to care.
—Liz Sly
Trudging uphill in snow, diminished
not merely by distance but clearly little,
a child sock-footed, climbing. A woman
below finds his skis, begins hiking waving
them high, yells to ask if he’s ours—
we ski down to the boy who now sits
with blue socks ice-encrusted. Tomás,
he murmurs, speaks English only um puoco—
doesn’t cry, keeps his eyes down, needs
not American words but his mãe—his
six-year-old finger rises like a feather
to the white-coated peak. In Idlib
a father holds his black-haired, onyx-
eyed daughter frozen, dark brows still
lifted in question. Now the ski patrol lifts
Tomas onto his snowmobile, they zip
away into thin air—someplace called
safety, someone’s arms— a salvação
Susan Craig is a graphic designer in Columbia, S.C. Her poems have appeared in Kakalak, Mom Egg Review, The Collective I, Fall Lines, and Jasper, among other publications.
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