At a red hot light
a bang like a shrill vacuum
stampeded my father who
ceremonially
looked up through the blue in his windshield
at the small-town sky in anticipation for
death from above.
Instead a crying girl
apologized for the bumper
unaware
she drove the black carriage
that transplanted him back
to his mostly suppressed youth in a
monastery in Lebanon
where he’d buried the dead between bombings
because the other boys were too afraid of ghosts.
Maybe it wasn’t 88
but that’s how I always remember it.
88 Ashkars I will never meet
slaughtered under cars, in their homes.
30 years and 7,000 miles away I’m safe and
I couldn’t imagine losing 88 (or so).
marioashkar 