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Could Have Been Me

Syria

By Robyn Keeble MBEPublished 6 years ago 2 min read
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I sit down with my family to watch a DVD

Couldn’t afford to pay full price so we bought a copy

Before I put it in the news flashes across the screen

Horrific imagery portrayed scenarios obscene

A war is waging on somewhere, a land that’s far away

Where parents can’t protect their young and children cannot play

I see the country’s name flash past, it causes me to freeze

As I travel back in time and feel the humid breeze

I spent my childhood in that land until we moved away

I cannot reconcile it with what I can see today

The images cut to my heart, causing it to thrum

My mind runs into overdrive, with thoughts it starts to hum

I see my son of 6 covered with ash instead of mud

His trusting big brown eyes portraying hurt whilst flecked with blood

Instead of sitting next to me on sofas full of hugs

He’d cling to me in terror as his land was raped by thugs

Then one day our home would be hit and we would have to leave

No time to stop and mourn the deaths, we’d journey as we grieved

Across a border we would race to seek food and safety

Where we would be farmed into camps plagued by lack and disease

We may try to leave the camps and seek a life elsewhere

Attempting death defying journeys ending in despair

And if, still, against all the odds we lived more days to see

Natives would condemn us as “those dirty refugees”

Living poor and cast-out in the ‘forward thinking west’

Who catalysed and fuelled the wars by thinking they knew best

But instead of facing a life full of sorrow and distress

I sit here with my loving son watching him smile and jest

And thankfulness bathes all my being as I can clearly see

I could have been one of them and they could have been me.

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About the Creator

Robyn Keeble MBE

I love to write.

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