To Libya
February 2011
When all is finally said and done,
there will be masses of graves of masses,
broken glass of pierced people,
and the children dying or already dead.
Somewhere, on a side street, someone's hair,
forgotten after the clean-up.
Shreds of hair on pavement, the reminder.
And the counting of those
taken away at night will not begin
until we have already forgotten
who it was that was taken.
Copyright Credit: Patricia Jabbeh Wesley, "To Libya" from When the Wanderers Come Home. Copyright © 2016 by Patricia Jabbeh Wesley. Reprinted by permission of University of Nebraska Press.