Phnom Penh

               A shoe, small, dark-stained

               crawls up between the burrowing roots

               beneath the tree

               where music once shrieked on

               and on to kill the screams;

               the pits, some empty wounds, some not yet pits

               where shoes now tread on hardened earth

               and jutting bones;

               a shoe, emptied of despair, begs remembrance.

                                        

© Sheila Rogers

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