Burning divides

Tears fell down Starya's cheeks flowing freely a cascade of sorrow and pain. Rivulets of raw emotion are black liquid scars that tell the story of her pain. The fire engulfs the sky, encompassing it in its heat and passion. The night sky is alit in orange sparks carried off by the wind. The heat presses down on my skin, testing me and challenging my will.1

My eyes mirror the fire in air- the one of human emotions. Star flames of yellow and orange and red project anger and hatred into the hearts and the faces of my countrymen standing with me. Icy flames of blue heartbreak and sorrow flow in rivers through the eyes of every one of us now exiled. Standing at the borders of land we have died for, we look across the explosive horizon at what is no longer ours. The pain we feel has no words yet created to describe it. 2

I tear my eyes away from the wildfires that have destroyed our history of who we were before today, and glance at Starya barely able to stand in her grief. I am standing by her side yet I have never felt farther apart from her and she is my blood sister. My calloused fingers wipe away her tears smearing black along her cheeks but I know like the black lines staining her face some scars won't heal. I kiss the tears falling from her eyes, and I hold her wanting to tell her that ‘I will always be there for her’ but I don't because I can't bear to leave her with a lie. One of the elder women takes her from me, giving solace to her shaking sobbing self, and I look at her full of regret and apology and I cross back over into the borders of what used to be ours. My bare feet sting to feel the burning grass under my feet and the burning embers pierce me in my weakest places. Hundreds of eyes watch me now, as I make my choice and move onward into a fiery horizon to find my destiny. 3

My feet pass wild land caught up in the fires of pain and chaos and war. My eyes blink away tears as I see people who a year ago would have taken me in to their home and fed me even if they were starving. Now I see them light villages on fire- burning the history between our peoples and light up a future created by hate. My heart is freezing despite the fires alight around me. As I walk through my peoples land, surviving to tell our story when the fires turn to ash, I hear children crying and families are forever broken. One house falls apart, the fire eating away the supports and as the fires catch the grass and race across a nation of a divided people my eyes see a history of peace and freedom burn and die in the ashes of the fires. 4