Pebbles For A Ghost Refugee

By: Farook Abdul-Karim Sesay, Writer. Poet. Legal advisor. Political commentator

On my tombstone, as I float into nothingness, I wonder what the inscribed words would be/ for my shamed soul will not be embraced. Welcomed. Because I am a refugee/

Oh my tombstone! That is not a refuge for the unwelcoming dead/ but some imagined space that belongs to only paupers. Drifters! And, the Stateless. That eerie phantom that those who own their land dread!/

My invisible tombstone. Ashamed of. Defiled. Defaced/ not made of concrete. Nor marble slabs. Only shards of memories. Long erased/

My tombstone. Fashioned out of longings. Regurgitated requiem. Now scattered like cold ashes across oceans/ ephemeral dreams. Unfulfilled ambitions. A refugee’s burning hunger. While seeking greener pastures. Now only floating dead wood. Full of maggots. In foreign oceans/

On my tombstone. Whose fate has a similar untold story. Like others. Siblings from different fathers. Forgotten. Without beautiful prose and words/ just a collective scorn. A frenzied scowl. Frightened smiles. From all those whose lands our fates are buried. Their unburied wrath. A cursed affliction. To the subsumed refugees. Our broken spirits helpless. Like scabbard sheaths. Without their gilded swords/

On my tombstone. Just like others! the words long faded. Visibly invisible. Our children would never read them. To know our history! Our futile journey. That drove us to search for succour. What we embraced. That burning light/ for nothing remained. Though from dust to dust! Ashes to ashes! They say is humanity’s fate. My dust. My ashes. Have not been. For they deemed me a refugee. Not a part of humanity. My ashes have been scattered. Against my will. My children’s will. They had blown them away. Like some blind child’s kite/

On my tombstone, thee place three pebbles. Ancestral stones. From the buried brown clay mud of my ancestors’ kraal. To commemorate my pregnant yesterday. My birth pangs of today. My unborn tomorrow!/Throw them in the ocean. Sing me a dirge. Songs from dead griots. As they submerge. To swim. With their buried secrets. Chagrin. Stories untold. For there you can safely bury my sorrow!/

FarAbdul-Karimarim Sesay

Writer. Poet. Legal advisor. Political commentator