By Alessandra Rey

My childhood wishes waft: drifting and dancing like a carousel of memories.

Revolving twirls host the carved-out desires of the improved plastic blonde or quorn nuggets.

Mother cups my infant paws on the shiny red rectangle that resides on wheels:

It accelerated like adrenaline-zoomed winds. 

I prance, I bounce onto the mattress cloud 

Sequestered in safety within the temple of the golden-peach hue of My bedroom.

Sometimes I heard the rent was due: sometimes I heard the threat of doom

But it was always, always okay.

My insouciant soul entwined in London lampposts 

And sanctity in the promise of the next sunlight or rain drizzled day.

Glimmering rose irises now laser the lens of frivolity I used to use to see.

Has your adolescent ache of righteousness been stolen by absence of peace?

Has fun flippancy of befriending or fighting the imaginary 

Been forcedly grounded in your unthinkably devastating and wretched reality?

Has the glisten of green grass wonderlands been ripped and pulled from its core 

As you’re chained to the inconceivable pain and scorch of a hell-fired zone of war?

Are your blue skies burdened and bloodied by inhuman cruelty, obliteration and monstrosity?

The bursting and torn hearts of mothers holding their babies, only three:

Nebulous flickers and ideas of the free as you’re imprisoned to violent hostility

When you needed to flee, seeking safety, for the love and protection of your family.

If only you could rest nestled in a blanket of stars, safe from the fear of fire. 

From one unjust blaze to another, the same red flesh should never be seen as the other.

Home is but the earth in which all soles tingle at a nettle’s sting, smile when the bird sings –

And what I see on you is wings, heavy and heroic:

I wish for you the soft sanctuary of cloaked protection,

Opened gates giving human fractions of heaven and a kind reception. 

Hatred and brutality are not pumped in liquid scarlet of humanity:

It is the open arms offering hearts and warm envelopments of hope.

Stay close: stay here. You deserve not to be alone.  

The same ground we walk on, is the key to our shared home.

As acid hell pumps cruel terror and rips security: you always deserve refuge.

It is but cold stoned rocks tumbling in a caged chest that refuse.

I am all grown up and can see it all clearly,

Everything I took for granted: the privilege and what should be

For every single beating pulse of the same species.

Your veins, your essence cling on courageously 

As you hold on to everything you ever cared for: sacredly.

Shadows pierce and obscure as you escape and then assimilate among. 

An angel’s promise wraps its luminosity around the young

Because kindness, generosity and refuge: are what it means to be human.  

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