Hiroshima

Look at me. I’m a kid. I’m six years old

And I’m walking with my mother, hand in hand

Down the streets, wondering what we will eat.

There hasn’t been much food recently,

There hasn’t been much of anything.

But my mother says we’re lucky.

It could be worse, she says.

I wonder what she means.

I wonder why my mother cries

When I ask about my father. Because he’s just away

On work, flying his plane.

Away, though, for a long time now

And he never writes

Because he is so far away.

I walk with my mother, hand in hand

And I look up at the sky. Someday

I should like to learn to fly a plane.

I wonder what it’s like to fly in the sky,

Instead of walking in the sun

Till my feet hurt. From up there the city

Will look like a toy, I think, the cars like dots

The people not seen at all.

How far can one see from up there?

Maybe all the way across the world

To China or America.

Someday I should fly a plane, like my father.

I want to tell my mother this, and I pull at her hand.

“You can do anything you want, sweetie,” she says,

“You’re young and the world is wide

You can do anything at all.”

She looks down at me and smiles, her smile flashing

Light flashing, light everywhere, a light within me

Burning glowing, light lifting me

Up, up into the sky

Until I am far above the town, looking down

At the streets the cars the people

And not seeing anything at all.

One does not see much

As vaporised ash in a mushroom cloud.

"Hiroshima", watercolour on paper. B. Purkayastha, 2006

                                                        

Copyright B Purkayastha 2012