Alexander da Silva Lima Poet Free verse

Reflection: Before God Lit the Sun (SK)

I remember little of my childhood.
Or perhaps I remember too much, but all of it in fragments.
Marabá Paulista would wake up before God lit the sun.
First came the smell of packed lunches being prepared—mingling scents
that slipped uninvited through the cracks in the houses' weathered wood.
Then, the diesel fumes and the red dust.
Old trucks, like monsters, rumbled through the streets,
swallowing up the adults and vanishing down the dirt road.
During the day, the town belonged to the children and the elderly.
We thought that was freedom.
At dusk, the trucks returned,
spitting out bodies that were barely alive;
my parents would arrive—worn out, stooped, and weary.
As a boy, I didn't yet know
how to put a name to it.
Today I know:
the trucks didn't just carry workers.
They carried away pieces of childhood.

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Alison A Smith September 21, 2026 at 4:02 PM A powerful free-verse reflection, shaped by vivid sensory detail and a child’s fragmented understanding of hardship. The recurring trucks become a deeply effective symbol, carrying the poem from remembered atmosphere into its poignant final recognition.