.

when you were five
when you were kidnapped from your family and imprisoned in

Kamloops

when I was two
when the Nazis

when Babi Yar
when I was five months

when the infamous Mush Hole mass execution of children of Brantford Mohawk Indian Residential School
run by the Church and Crown of England

when they lined up the children next to a big ditch and shot them
so they fell into the ditch

when some of the kids were still alive
when they shoveled the dirt on top of them. Buried them alive on land occupied by the Canadian Army
at its Basic Training Camp Number 20

when on this earth when in time
we are breathing
the same air they are breathing, the killers when their victims
when Time

as me, you
as them, inside us we breathe

all things
connected as above so below

when we were children, prisoners
of the Church’s concentration camp

inspired by the Nazis
who were inspired by the American Holocaust
when the 19 million Indigenous Americans disappeared when Hitler found his model
in Andrew Jackson
who sent the Cherokee on the Trail of Tears
against Congress’s vote
when Hitler wrote
“I model my Solution
on the American Solution
of its Natives”

“How native American
the line
to the shower, now
there’s an archetypical image…”

when the wives
hid you in their pantries, under their beds
when their husbands on orders of California’s governor were hunting you down to kill

when your parents, kidnapped, impoverished prisoners in Kamloops surviving on mush
when they heard 36

when “infamous,” when they stood us

Jews and Indians, Africans, Muslims, Chinese, when et al this archetypical image
when I was a white girl
burned at the stake

when my father

when the spirit breaks when the tar of despair

the quicksand of the buried bodies the sorrow

the soul
denied

when all you have is your secret sex when finally alone
the only sacred place
all that you have, your self

when the self triumphs

and this is God

—

from The Visit by Sharon Doubiago, published by Wild Ocean Press, copyright 2015 Sharon Doubiago.