When your mates tossed soccer ballsand braided each other’s hair,you were issued a Kalashnikov,given a rag tag uniform, and set upon the path of Hannibal instead.

The color of hatred is not the rage in a woman’s eyes,jilted by her lover in the eleventh hour.It is the deployment of kids as arsenalsin a holy war that’s not so holy.

What does it matter to thoseliving across lines of hate and insanity,spawned by centuries of oversight,their border posts fortified by rifles?

I am yesterday’s newsabandoned in a heap, patiently waitingfor the recyclers bin

I will not speak of the woman,round and heavy, like me,who will give birth to a child she’ll be ashamedto name.

On this dayinnocence was drowned in water,and puberty terminated by the blade of the guillotine.

How long would we continueto hear in the news our tomorrows silenced like the lives of flies?