Where the Monarch Flies
Notice the lost ones.
We trek on your farmland,
and we travel in masses.
Yet, we are alone in our own journeys
searching for our freedom, family.
With sunkissed skin
and sunken eyes
we’re pleading for mercy
from your lands
that may harbor us.
We drift upon the gaping Mediterranean
and carve through the cityscape of Thessaloniki.
Guided by prayer, led by God,
yet the innocent are spit on
by His own flesh.
There is no small cost that a pilgrimage demands
of those who are forsaken.
Violence has sculpted
natives into nomads.
We are insects
that migrate as a frigid winter falls
in our homelands.
However, we are not locusts.
Rusty hues blend into a pale morning sky
as the monarchs take flight into new climates
while ashes settle like snowflakes
in the land they’ve left behind.
A metamorphosis occurs,
but the earthbound caterpillars are left behind
to munch the diseased foliage
as their mothers, fathers, siblings, cousins,
take flight.
Syria has betrayed us,
so we flee with hearts
as raw as corpses
and hope
as loud as gunfire.