THE SECRETS OF SEASONAL FLOODPLAINS RESURFACE IN SUDAN OF 2021

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May 2022, First published in Glocal Magazine.

In our time,

somewhere between Ethiopia and Sudan,

they drift amid the muddy reeds, mangroves, and hyacinth fields,   

like vagrant palm fronds.

They swirl with great force, towards the monstrous mouth of a Nubian estuary,

towards a hemostatic Nile.

From up the stream, come what my eyes fail to register and my mind fails to grasp:

those who sail without a skiff,

not flotsam, nor jetsam,

but damned nameless souls sentenced to float along the border with bound hands,

marking the boundary between the kingdom of Abyssinia and the kingdom of the dead,

haunted by the fresh entry wounds on their foreheads,

debris of war they could not flee,

and familiar faces who took their lives.