1.
You used to write to me:
‘Thank you Dear’.
‘You know I am here’.
‘I used to think all Australia hates us’.
‘God made us black we accepted. Why others cannot accept.
‘I miss my family’.
‘Someday I will be free and I will sing thanks to all the worlds’.
It has been five days since I heard from you.
This sudden silence scares me.

2.
We sat at a white table. Our eyes cast away. I had to leave. You could not. Despair silently slid down the legs of our chairs and pooled on the lino.

3.
Catatonic and incarcerated
the four year old child will take nothing more into her body-
neither food nor sound.
Her screams too are frozen.
Bitter brutality slices
her psyche into thin slivers
petrified
they adorn Scott’s* blood-soaked soul.

*Referring to Scott Morrisson Minister for Immigration and Border Control of Australia.