I never understood
why you couldn’t just
let my people go, even as
the plagues approached,
even when holding on now
meant losing everything later.
Now I get it. It’s terrible
to separate, to say goodbye
and watch the world drift away
like a sailor leaving shore –
alone, and who knows
for how long? No one
belongs to anyone, Pharaoh,
you were wrong about that.
And yet the opposite
is true too: we all belong
to each other, which is
what makes it so hard
to let our people go.
From the series, “Bathtub Pandemic Poems“
