He left his village for another, there was simply too much blood.<\/p>\n
It coloured his mornings red, his nights, too, and poisoned<\/p>\n
all the in-between hours.\u00a0 He knew that if he lingered he<\/p>\n
would hear their fists on his door, see their fingers pry open<\/p>\n
his windows, feel their voices in his lungs.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So much noise.\u00a0 Can’t one just live in quiet peace?<\/p>\n
Did the holy one shout his way to the sky?\u00a0 Who heard him?<\/p>\n
Does one always need to be heard this way?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In the fourth village many weeks later, he still had enough legs<\/p>\n
to hit the road again.\u00a0 So many legs, but you are given only two.<\/p>\n
You are also only given one head.\u00a0 He had left father, mother,<\/p>\n
sisters.\u00a0 Perhaps everyone had gone away by now.\u00a0 In his pocket,<\/p>\n
he felt a key but there was nothing left for it to open.\u00a0 He felt<\/p>\n
useless, keeping something useless, for nothing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Finally, the sea, the wide open sea.\u00a0 He wanted the sea.\u00a0 Now,<\/p>\n
anything was better than land, especially his land.\u00a0 He took<\/p>\n
out of his pocket his own clenched fist, tight with money.<\/p>\n
The boat was waiting to take him far away, he didn’t much care<\/p>\n
where as long as it was away.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Too late for phone calls.\u00a0 Too late for breakfast.\u00a0 Too late for sleep.<\/p>\n
But not too late for the sea.\u00a0 Not too late for his tired feet.\u00a0 Not<\/p>\n
too late for his head.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The boat was full of people such as he.\u00a0 Everyone wet with the<\/p>\n
waves, wet with fear, wet with cold, wet with keys that no longer<\/p>\n
opened doors.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
[This poem promises to be a lot longer than what I can write for the marathon, so, for now, this will have to do.]<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u00a9\u00a0 Ella Wagemakers, 08.51 Dutch time (= 2.51 EST in the US)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
He left his village for another, there was simply too much blood. It coloured his mornings red, his nights, too, and poisoned all the in-between hours.\u00a0 He knew that if he lingered he would hear their fists on his door, see their fingers pry open…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12860","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marathon-poem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12860","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12860"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12860\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12869,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12860\/revisions\/12869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12860"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12860"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepoetrymarathon.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12860"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}