Don’t Forget (A poem for Sahrawi)

By Cynthia Thanda

As you click your computer
Browsing through the lies
Fabricated to erase my life
Know that I am somewhere
Under the sizzling sands
That now suffocate my land.

My rotting body lies on the ground
It’s a feast for the flies all around
While my son clutches
My corpse, crying for his father.

Don’t forget it’s your silence that killed me
As your pen scribbles on that paper
Remember it’s inked with my blood
See as redness glows under the light
That luminates your room
For me a deep darkness has become my tomb
It has snatched my sight
Like you have grabbed my land
I have no other home except under
This carpet of hot and heavy sand.

As propaganda flows into distant seas
Rewriting, falsifying my history
Don’t forget it’s your silence that really killed me.

---

Cynthia Thanda is a dedicated reader and writer. She has written three published novels: Dirty Laundry, Dirty Closet and Smooth Criminal, with more still on the way. She has several published short stories, some of which were published in Petlwana Journal of Creative Writing, with the others published in German. She is the former editor of the UB Horizon as well as a journalist for the Pan Afrikanist Online. During what she calls lazy times, she enjoys watching documentaries, listening to Eminem and rock music and drinking black coffee.