What Aylan wished for Christmas

 

If I could take the eiderdown of tide

I would tuck you in beneath the Christmas star

and tell you a story of refugees and modern day Herod’s.

 

If could exhume all the whispers from black locket clams

I’d share your face if I thought it would matter

your fashionista death undoes our threads.

 

You went at the right and wrong time –

Jellyfish are mating with plastic that fills our seas.

I read of a whole bay where waves crash logos on Dominican sand.

 

You came at the right and wrong time,

in the year of your birth your mother’s waters broke

this was no omen for her arms rowed into your blue porthole eyes.

 

In the red hallways of skin we are painted the same colour throughout,

one day when we meet I’ll bring a grain of my eyes –

we’ll watch it grow a land away from the sea.

 

If I could blow out the star of David I would not,

there is a saying about light I shall honour,

how darkness serves light and vice-versa.

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