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Doomed romance

It was nineteen fifty-two. Everything was supposed to be picnics, cranberry juice and sweet summer grass. Lies naturally, but we believed them. It was the Gala, and I told her that I liked her polka-dot dress; she said she liked mine too. In a quiet moment, we kissed beneath the Oak tree on the village green. Her breath tasted like cinnamon. We laughed and she talked to me about Greek Philosophy. There was a peace between us, like a gentle melody on the piano.
They didn’t understand. Abuse fell upon us like hail and our love seemed a poor shelter from that storm. She promised me we’d fight them together. But their hate had poisoned her cinnamon breath. Whilst I armed myself with love, she left on the last bus…

The Secret Holocaust

The History room fell silent.
The film unveiled our ignorance
Of a Secret Holocaust.
Not The Final Solution but too similar
For comfort. Nearly Seventy-Five Thousand
Lives all lost in smoke.
It was Euthanasia, the harshest kind.
Thousands of little babes in one dark, dreadful swoop.
The screen filled with little faces;
Smiling faces; Dead faces,
Their fates already sealed and posted,
To the Reaper for his next round.
And stranger's faces lead me, wandering
In the mists of the mind to one close to my heart. 
Her little mits hold me in their palms,
To ignore if she so wishes.
I know her cheeky smile and her laugh
As untempered as the sea. She is so free.
Then with a pang of grief that rocks me
To the very core, I.Can.See.Her.
She is burning, her plump rosed flesh
Eaten away by the knawing flames
Of the Swastika.
She screams her own name, as she is
Wont to do, her face contorted
With panic and fear, but I am
Powerless to help her, as trapped
As the parents of the little dead faces, 
Forced to watch as smoke and ash
Curl from the chimney,
Dirtying the air.
My sister, my sister, my little
Baby sister! Seventy years
Too soon and it would have been she.
I can see my pretty sis laid out on a white slab,
Her face as marble,
Her eyes as glass.
A man in black reaches into her,
Emerges with my Gem's heart.
It bulges in his hand, throbbing
And red as a rose. But
In his eyes, there's naught
Save a speck.
"As I suspected," he remarks
With a smoothness that makes him,
More slippery than wet ice,
"It's too small to be human.
She's for the hole."
A door opens in the wall.
Down into Fire goes my sis,
White shroud and all.

By J. A. Sahu, 18th of March 200

I am...

I am my sister who isolated me in a world of words,
I am my mother who gave me those words from the stories on the shelf.
I am the long American summers that gave me a playground of endless imagination.
I am the friend who played all the minor characters.
I am the voyage that changed who I was.
I am the teacher who told me to write.
I am hundreds of biros and thousands of exhausted notebooks.
I am Dream World, I am Russia, I am the english country road – my perfect settings.
I am other people’s stories, especially Lord of the Rings but also The Count of Monte Cristo, Jane Eyre, The Novice, The Gift, The Riddle and the Cow, Artemis Fowl, Harry Potter, A Tale of Two Cities.
I am the ancient myths who taught me magic again.
I am Nicolai Desny, I am Leon Harris and all the other characters.
I am the sky which always inspires my hand..
I am the movies – fuel for the imagination.
I am my friends who give me all my characters’ faults and qualities.
I am Livejournal – my publisher.

...............

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