Rape Camp

                 for the victims

She was young, barely 14,
breasts slowly ripening
that cool Balkan day, a day
when her future still was a carpet,
rolled out to greet her.

We're taking you to your parents,
Serb soldiers said when they grabbed her.
Grabbed her and her friend from the fields
where wheat grew like temples into a holy sky.

Birds rushed away. Clouds soared into dark
peaks. A sudden wind lifted her hair
when the soldiers tore off her hijab.

She still wanted to believe.

Just up those stairs, the soldiers said,
pushing them until they stumbled, then raping
them on the rough wooden floor.

When her friend wouldn't stop screaming
they did it again with a bottle.
A broken one.

It took her two days to die.

No nice Muslim man will want you now,
the soldiers said.

They cut her for fun,
forced her to strip, to dance
for them nude at night, to do other
things she'd never imagined, cutting
her again if she refused.

She was the only survivor out of twenty
packed into that room.

Sometimes she thinks of before,
of seawater blue skies, birds serenading her.

She thinks of the husband she'll never have,
and tries to remember her innocence.

Sometimes she pretends she's a statue,
scars roping her body like blood,
the blood that earlier clotted
around dead legs and arms.

Nights, when the dreams come,
she tries not to scream.



Pris Campbell
©2010

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