exile

My son was born without the power of speech, the secret police beat me while he was still in the womb. Hassan's belly button disappeared as he grew older and he painted a cave of winds (a reference to his family I believe) on a butterfly's wings, when Hassan slept a flower grew where his belly button used to be and the butterfly would rest on the flower as he slept. The photographs taken of the bombed village we left slept then blinked woken by desert storms hammering the shack. I saw a gun balanced on the flower as Hassan slept and it began to talk of a butterfly choking on the vapors of war and surviving. My thoughts became formless like the wind. I wrote our names on two sheets of paper throwing them into the night like two abandoned wings.