Escape
Daybreak in the muck guides our calloused footsteps,
a chorus of shifting feet chained together echoes through the muggy air.
Mosquitoes travel with our building anxiety,
playing with the sticky sweat curdling our skin.
We hope the dogs will be lost to the damp odor of swamp
and creatures of the deserted outback.
There no other cover for the smell of nigger.
Haggard bodies aged with scar lines
like crooked brittle tree branches.
I am merely bare bones and breasts lingering by chance of strength
traveling with my lover:
A dingy tar colored mark of a man
left over from cracked whips, caged animals,
swollen, molten skin with muddy eyes, diminishing muscular form
yet still here, still with me -
staggering through the musty unknown.
We hear the men tracking us,
their quarter horses pummeling the ground.
Our journey is a blur of moss and umber zigzags
feeling their grimacing stares drag along our heels
One of their dogs comes for us, no soul or mercy in its eyes.
My companion's aching body shifts with all its might to knock the beast down.
Running to no end,
surrounded only by the dry heaves of our panting.
We slow down, our sweat cools with respite
hoping the hunters are lost among the typha and cypress trees.
As we pass through a field of golden-brown stalks,
shots are fired.
A bullet digs into my left shoulder as if to eat my flesh.
He wants to embrace the weight of my pain on his side,
but his torso is the next victim of a piercing metal orb.
My mind is still running away, but my body falls to the ground with him.
wondering if the last of his spirit is bleeding out.
He expects me to run, leave us behind to die and rot into nothing but the muck
Cramps of fear curdle in my stomach over the choice of death or loneliness
the chance of survival being mulled over
by the baking landscape, his labored breath, and the trudging footsteps that whip at my ears.
I see the men through the waves of heat,
baring their corroded teeth, shouting profanities like demon outcries
coming, for us.
I take the chance to escape,
putting him over my right side
running to certain freedom, or death.
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