The Deadline
The Deadline
I stand at the edge of the world,
With no roof to call my own and no hand to hold.
The tide has turned, and all its people
Have set their faces against us—against me.
Perhaps it was always thus,
And I was merely too blind to see,
Too dulled by their daily bread
To taste the poison in their smiles,
To hear the hollow echo intheir praise,
To feel the chill behind their offered hand.
We gave them our trust, called them kin,
But their kindness was a leash,
When one drops the pretense,
A chorus of condemnation rises,
And we, the other, are made to burn.
They sing of unity in diversity—
It is carved into their anthem, their creed.
But when the chorus grows too vast,
When the harmony grows too strange,
They turn, and the song becomes a siren.
They bar their doors. They choose their leaders.
They march with torches in the daylight.
They look at us, and in their eyes,
We are not people, but vermin;
And they set a time for our erasure.
They sing of unity in diversity,
Yet their hospitality is a locked gate.
They sing of unity in diversity,
Yet we are treated as a plague upon their soil,
Mocked, spat upon, broken, and despised.
The clock is set.
They count the seconds, the minutes, the hours,
Tracing the arc of the sun
Until the final, fatal strike,
The hour when the hunt begins.
Tell me, then, if they sing of unity in diversity,
Why is our existence the crime?
Why is our breath the threat?
Why is our plea for peace
The justification for their war?
If they sing of unity in diversity,
Then why, oh why, is the whole world against us?
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