“I love you Mom and Dad
I’m dying because I can’t breathe
The plan to get abroad did not succeed
Mom, I am so sorry, Mom”
Those were the last words you wrote
In the dark minus 25 degree container
With thirty eight others
Who were dying around you…
I can’t imagine how you felt
While it was happening
While death was approaching
The dreams that you’d had
Before you stepped on the plane
To leave your home country behind
Did they flash up in the dark freezing night
For one last time before you died?
I can’t fathom what you had to go through
We never knew each other in life
But I think I know the dreams you had
They couldn’t be so different from mine
When I stepped on the plane
Many years ago, for the first time
To leave my country, our country, behind
I was only a couple of years younger than you were now
The desire to go was burning in my chest
To get out and see the world
I studied and studied to look for a way
You worked and worked to save money to pay
The smugglers, who put you inside
That lorry container and left you die
I sit here and remember the desire
That was fevered in my young chest
In the quest for a new life
Desperate to break out of the box that framed my mind
I wonder if luck hadn’t shined,
If I hadn’t got the scholarship,
Would I have tried something like you did?
How many in history’ve had the same yearning like us?
How many’ve gone to stay, and been buried, in a foreign place?
As people in our home country often say,
“May it be better in your next life!”
But who knows if there’s a next life?
I can only say that I understand
Why you got on that fateful trip
And I KNOW the dreams you had
Rest in peace, my fellow-country woman./.
Oct 25, 2019
Gnocchi Artyst
