70,000
by Carmen H Gray
(art by children, ages 10 and 11, while staying at a respite center run by the Catholic church in McAllen, Texas)
70,000 is a neat number
Rounded up for sixty-nine thousand and something beyond fifty
Easily divisible by two
Until you keep dividing in half
Eventually you reach fractions of a whole
Those shards of whole parts
Are not just numbers
They are fractured pieces of a person’s soul
Disturbances in family fault lines
That refuse to lay dormant
You can see it in the drawings of the children
Who are crying, “¿Dónde está mi mamá?”
And in the exanimated eyes
That can no longer produce tears
Those quashed emotions inhabit
An exponential fallout
From this tidy number
Monarca Rising 