We’re Leaving
Three blocks from the house, as we turned the corner, I saw soldiers with guns around a kneeling man, so I told my daughters to look away.
Hurry, I said, to our driver.
As we pulled in, I noticed our door hanging off its hinge.
A boy was sitting on the front steps, crying.
He ’ s our neighbor, he ’ s five years old.
Soldiers had overturned all our chairs. Our cabinets were open, papers scattered. They broke the front window, so shards lay strewn everywhere.
They pulled up our floor planks. Almost everything important had been taken away.
I still have it, I said.
We’re leaving, I said, so we grabbed our neighbor, and left.
Photo by Aleksey Kashmar on Unsplash