Refugee Week Competition 2022

How do you erase a blank page?

Days to weeks

My perfect picture now seemed scribbled

It seemed to have gone little by little

A Little less detail

A little less knowledge

Yet I did not acknowledge

These things I’m learning everyday

Always rub a bit away from the past

But time was going fast

Weeks to months

Where is the memory of so long ago?

A scribbled picture with a hidden logo

Where are the bombshells and where are the screams?

Are they nowhere to be seen?

Each second and minute I step unto this land

Bit by bit the picture is erased

Blown from my memory

Like sand in my hand

Where are the scars, the invisible scars?

Where are the fallen stars that they claimed to be ours?

Where are the houses I once called home?

Where is my scribbled picture and logo?

Minutes to hours

From my life to ours

Sharing my picture with others while they smile and ask

‘How does it feel now?’

I would stop, stare, and raise a brow

Then I questioned myself and asked

Have the scars not healed?

Are the aches from my ears not gone?

I feel no pain

Yet there is no way I could explain

The emptiness in my heart and my soul

The emptiness on my scribbled picture

Days to months, months to years

So sad to wave bye to my teenage years

Hormones homework they’re all gone

And so is the scribbled picture I had for so long

All there is, is a blank piece of paper

Rubber marks the remains of all these years

Now fear and I wonder can I erase a blank page.

My memory from the past gone

My scars from so long ago gone

My culture my captured culture gone

Is there even a real me?

Is healing not repairing?

Not erasing?

I miss the past my troubled past

I missed the thought of having my own story to share

I missed the scribbled picture I had so unique so different to others

Then I’d close my eyes to sleep

Divergent colours, sounds and lights

None of them feels right

The only thing that feels familiar to me

Was the warmth that radiated from my hands.

My hands were warm

And so was my heart

And there was the scribbled picture

My memories’ art

I smiled and sighed

I felt relived

The scars were there – the scars we shared

And there it was my perfect picture

In my perfect dream.

Refugee Mind