My name is Maria
I am nine years old
I lived in El Salvador
with my mami and my papi
I loved them very much
Bad people killed my papi
My mami was afraid all the time
She said we had to leave
to go away from that special place
that we called home
We had to leave my friends
and my abuela
had to leave the beautiful flowers
that climbed up the side of our house
I did not want to go
My mami said
we had no choice
She told me there was a place
a wonderful place
far from where we lived
a place called the United States
I had heard of it in school
It was a place where people
did not have to be afraid
where people like us
could find a better life
We said goodbye to all we knew
I hated the day that we left
I have cried so many tears
that I sometimes think I have no tears left
We walked such a long way
I was hungry
We had to sleep on the hard ground
but always my mami stayed by me
She held me in her arms
Sometimes
she cried too
We still had great hopes
With many other people
we crossed a big river
asked for help
People in uniforms
put us in their cars
took us to a big building
Before long
they took me away from my mami
She screamed and held onto me
but they pried her arms away and took me
Tonight
I don’t know where she is
I stand in a room full of other children
It doesn’t smell very good here
and many are wailing
Someone handed me a little baby
told me to care for it
The baby is dirty
but there is no water to wash
either him or myself
I don’t’ know how to take care of a baby
but I hold him in my arms
try to rock away his tears
My body shivers
It is so cold in here
I have nothing to keep me warm
My mouth feels bad
I haven’t been able to brush my teeth
since I came here
and bad tastes bubble up into my mouth
from my empty stomach
I don’t know what is going to happen to me
Sometimes I think
I just want to die
I am so afraid
I want my mami to put her arm around me
to wipe away the tears that streak my dirty face
I want to take a shower
I want to eat some of my abuela’s puposas
I want to be warm again
I want to sleep in a real bed
I was taught to pray
and I wonder if anyone listens
If you can hear me, God,
Please
help me
help all of the children
help my mami
Please … Please…
© Mina V. Kirby, 6/23/2019
I was asked if Maria, the girl in the story above, is real. Here is my reply. Yes, she is real. Her name is perhaps not Maria. She might be ten years old or even seven or eight. She might be from Guatemala or Honduras. She might even be a boy and not a girl. But she is real. She is truly real, and she is at this moment, through no fault of hers or her parents’, being detained against her will in a crowded, dirty facility somewhere in the United States of America. In the Land of the Free…
Wow! Thanks for publishing this.
Thank YOU! This is beautiful. The image is beautiful and the words. I hope you’re okay that I spiked up your headline a little bit.
The new headline is great.
I am so furious and upset over what’s being done to these children. This government is stealing them out of their parents’ arms! I have questions, but no one to ask. Questions like What is the endgame plan for these children, since they likely cannot be reunited with their families? What will happen to them? Who will take care of them? Or are they going to be left in those dog cages until they die?!
This is a shameful chapter in American history. This is even worse than the incarceration of the Japanese during WWII. At least there, families were together. The children weren’t wrenched away from them and left to fend for themselves, filthy, cold and unattended.
My God, how could this have happened in our country. I know, I know “how it happened.” But is this a true reflection of our country? No one, Democrat or Republican, has the backbone to get Trump out of White House. They issue subpoenas, hold them in contempt, and then what? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. No one is jailed. Damn it, put them in jail. I seems I am crying every day for these children and I know it’s piddling compared to what they are enduring. Elizabeth Warren and other legislative members go to border to check out what’s happening and are refused entry. Can’t the US Marshall get the doors open? Just because the guards say “no entrance”, it’s doesn’t make it so. Would someone please step up and stop this nightmare.
I totally believe this story. This is a small part of why I am so horrified at what’s going on with incoming refugees. Minor detail though, (I used to work with a lot of Salvadorans) it’s pupusa, and she would have to be from El Salvador, because that’s where pupusas are from. Although I hear that they have them in Honduras now too.
Oops…I didn’t check the spelling. She is from El Salvador. I used the word because I am writing a book about someone from there.