After an attack, alive, a woman searches through dead bodies
for a cell phone to call for help. She fumbles through
bloodied pockets, broken limbs, aware of the crimson trickling
like tears down her own face. Propriety has no place in survival.
On another road, in another country, a man has not died. He has not lost
a limb, has not felt the pierce of an errant blade. He did not choose
another woman to mate with or marry. He chose to leave,
to save what was left of his life, without her.
Here lie the lies we have told ourselves to sugarcoat the past,
obscure our choices, year after year, each action and inaction.
As if this moment were an accident of history and not a monument
we helped, brick by brick, to build.
I miss the stench of female ginkgoes, forcing me to appreciate plainer air
long after I have passed their beautiful rotting.
In Ontario, the dead were kept in octagonal houses
until the ground thawed, became more welcoming.
But we, we cannot afford to wait for spring.
–
Heather Bourbeau’s fiction and poetry have been published in 100 Word Story, Alaska Quarterly Review, Cleaver, Eleven Eleven, Francis Ford Coppola Winery, The Cardiff Review, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. She has worked with various UN agencies, including the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia and UNICEF Somalia.