#JusticepourTheo: a poem

#JusticepourTheo: a poem

written by: Arusha Topazzini

@arushatopazzini

 

winterblue fills my face with icicle breath
and the muted song of receding snow.
winterblue fills my window-sky,
now chiselled with hotcoffee exhale.
in the early-morning drowse,
tinybird clawings made leaf shadows on the uncertain snow:
sleep avoided me last night.

my tired eyes drink in wintertime too radiant for words-
but inside i am another kind of speechless,
and my heart is away, far away,
lotused within another heart
lying unbearably still, and also sleepless,
on a shiny hospital bed.

Theo, You are Pain:
you stepped into your everyday careful yet casual,
and life rammed into the deep of you, desecrating;
their uniformed four against your one.
your truth walked unbidden into my everyday-
a receding tide deepbreathing in,
before crashing down,
your pain washed me in its wake,
and i am gasping for the icicle sigh of a winterblue morning.

i am them,
who cried
unworded in disbelief.
who quickly forgot before it even happened,
their souls silenced
by angry metal pushing and tearing them wide open
beneath a February sky;
i am them,
who set the night alight
with disavowed years of unheard pain,
gassed for grieving on the unforgiving streets
that truncheoned your innocence away
as the world looked on.

Theo, your heartbeat is pain,
as i am you,
slit open to my depth,
your name is Jyoti Singh and Lucia Perez,
as i am you,
gaping wide, bleeding loud
on the unforgiving streets of Delhi and Buenos Aires,
as i am you
the nameless, faceless war-torn
brokenhearted wombs
of Kivu and everywhere else
in this exhausted world,

every time.

 

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

A poem inspired by the recent events in Paris, when a young man named Theo was brutalised by police officers. One of them rammed his truncheon into Theo’s anus so violently, he had to be operated upon and was in hospital, convalescing.
This poem is dedicated to victims of sexual violence and assault the world over.