Revenge
They came to our town,
kicked down doors,
dragged us screaming
into the street.
They took everything
worth taking,
burned the rest,
except for me,
left kneeling in the ruin,
plotting revenge,
slowly and quietly
like a predator stalking its prey
in the night, but then
I saw in the ashes
a flower upright,
alive, immune
to the smell of death around it.
Sun and rain
wrote on its golden petals,
and I heard the world cry
out of that flower.
I will never reveal
the words,
but they were sweeter
than any revenge
could ever be.