She goes to the moment where memory raids her.

G.N. kick door won’t will innocents, commands street.

Helicopter mosquitoes in skies made mouldy with sobs,

threatens to walk to the middle of the avenue littered with shells

or not answer for those choosing eaves, “the suspects”.

Eight years old and everything’s big.

Looks at the tiny fingernail, red from touching her house wall,

firing line for spies, her bloodied bed.

Clings to abuela who trembling jumps

over barricade blocks.

Where are the others? she wonders,

seeing for the first time towering flames

lighting up the town centre bar.

 

They quicken the pace and bump into the fat lady

who never leaves her house,

the pale Budha on the armchair, above four men

bearing her, a hoy saint’s statue amid gunpowder flurries.

 

Then she resists the sweat of the palm and looks back:

never forgets the first time

she saw a dinosaur

that was a tank.