Reader discretion advised contains adult themes
She stayed in a hostel the first few weeks,
New start, new place, strange people,
Odd language, but hey!
Nobody asked, nobody cared!
She could learn fast, and learn she did,
So word by word joining, her lexicon grew,
And Natalya, now Anna,
That simple change, her origin masked.
But like I said, anyway,
Nobody asked, nobody cared!
And soon she found work, moved away from the city.
A seasonal job cleaning tables, quite busy,
Like summers back home,
And nobody asked, and nobody cared!
Where you were from, or where you were going.
At least here they gave you the brush and the broom,
And they paid her in cash, so she rented a room,
Her solitude broken by only a phone,
And those memories of histories best left alone.
Some tourists were nice and she learned a tip-smile.
One Yank left her twenty, another three fives.
But summer clichés, and that history of woes,
(That nobody asked, they didn’t want to know),
Pulled threads in her head, and gripped tightly her skull,
Making knots in her brain that drove off her smile,
Such that every “Hi honey!” and “top o’ the morn!”
All the phrase nonsense, so corny, so worn,
Stretched out her fine thread, which finally snapped.
And out of control, she answered them back.
But you know really, nobody’d ask and nobody’d care,
Had the boss sent her packing, it would have seemed fair.
But, having explained that she might lose her job,
He gave her one chance to explain what it was.
So since he had asked and it seemed he might care,
She told him her truth, eye to eye, chair to chair.
Those things in her life that had made it quite tough,
To smile oh so nicely, when she’d plain had enough.
While they raped her dear mother, the orc Rashists laughed.
Then the boy-soldier bastards of Putin’s proud Russia,
Had tortured her father and buggered her brother.
She hid in the garden, behind the log pile,
Trembling from screams you could hear for a mile.
When at last all was quiet, she crawled through the mud,
Her own mother’s vomit and pools of dark blood.
There were gobs of orc spit and bad magic smells,
No scene from a nightmare, this truly was Hell.
Mother slit-throated, feet burned in the fire,
Brother’d been beaten, then buggered, he died.
Just nine years old, but destroyed and defiled,
He’d never make ten and he’d never know why.
Her dear kindly father, slumped forward at rest,
Death sweat glistening cheeks, bright blood dripping chest.
Gaps in his mouth, which missed all its teeth,
Gouged eyes and tongue mixed on the table beneath.
So if she was short, just once in a while,
With less than best courtesy and missing her smile.
That’s where she had left them, and when and the why.
Now when cleaning the kitchen, the smell of burnt fat,
Brings back sickly memories, of feet singed to black.
And cleaning up ketchup spills, left by the young,
Resembles intensely the pieces of tongue,
That the Rashists had cut from her father’s kind mouth,
To slice it and dice it, in front of his spouse.
And children who run to play with each other,
Are constant reminders that unlike her brother,
They’ll live to remember fond memories jam-packed,
With holidays spent with their families intact.
And from all of the countries those visitors came,
The Yanks and the British, the Germans, the French.
They could have done more, but they chose to ignore,
Because however we’d begged, we’d plead, we’d implore,
Nobody asked.
Because nobody cared!
But they could have done more.
They could have done more.
They should have done more.
(12.06.24)
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