The Silence

My daughter knew a murderer.

I had never seen him, otherwise
my fists would have knocked
more than his breath away.

She told me how other children
would dig holes in the middle
of nowhere, to have some place
to hide from him,
if homes became tantamount
with vulnerability.

Two years have passed.
I finally saw this man,
and he was nothing but a boy.
Is that why I am haunted too?
That I try to imagine he has a mask,
when really it is just his innocence
freely sold?

Every night, my daughter waits
to hear his horses' hooves stop,
yet he always passes us by.
I wait with her through
long, foodless evenings.

This boy has scared the
silence out of her pixie-like
eyes; she doesn't dream, but
nightmares and rape and loneliness
still cut into her.

The golden chain with
rubies around her heart
was all she held.
I wake up,
she can only murmur
"where have I gone?"
My soul plummets.
And she is gone now,
stolen-

I fear sleep will not be enough,
and that her body will demand
an end,
before her spirit is bargained with
[again and again]
by this devil.

*written October 24, 2012 at 6:17 pm.
* this is just fiction- but I thought about writing about the fear in a child's eyes from the book "The Kite Runner".