Exodus

It's the night before we're about to leave
but we can't know that yet. 

We've seen the omens:

tensions rising, bursts of anger, 

fear of retaliation, retribution. 

We've heard the oaths:

threats of increased burden, less time, 

warnings of a labor strike, 

fewer supplies, withheld rations,

self harm, abandonment, destruction,

greater pressure to perform, 

resources wasted, sabotage,

growing violence toward the innocent.

Through it all we withstand

expectations of continued work

showing up every day as if

nothing is happening, holding on

to the pretense of normality as if

we can't hear the bomb ticking in our sleep. 

Then suddenly I wake to unfamiliar silence. 

The clock has stopped. 

Time is up, it says. 

When did it stop? Was it tonight? Yesterday? 

Have I been too exhausted to notice 

the cessation of the once relentless ticking? 

I wake in my bed to whispers, 

the drowsy whine of my many brothers, 

an insistant hand shaking my shoulder 

the voice of my mother close to my ear: 

"Shh, Grab your pillow. Hold on to me." 

I find myself bundled with a small sack of clothes 

into the back seat with my siblings 

groggy in the night asking,

"Where are we going? Why is it dark?" 

When we stop again, we lie down 

in bedrolls on the basement floor 

at the friend of my mother's and sleep.

My dad wakes to an empty house, no breakfast, 

the silent absence of five children vanished. 

We wake in a strange place  

a warm glow in the kitchen 

where the tyrant isn't. 

The wilderness awaits