Malaria Poems: I Want To Go

“Pregnant women are ‘four times more likely to contract and twice as likely to die from malaria than other adults.’⁵”

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I Want To Go

I want to go in the moment

before going in. The concrete

wall seems grayed with knowing.

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Ear pressed against the grain

hears the cold simmer of silence

then the boom and echo of flood

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in throat. Sound chokes me. I go

in to see brown babies breaking

in their voices. Where walls meet

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a young boy plays with shadows

and over and over kisses the static

outline of his mother’s pregnant belly.

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Her temples show no trace of voice

in veins and in that moment I go

and somehow come to on all fours.

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I reach, dip my hands in what was

a river, now dried to open scabs,

taste the wink of wounds under scars.

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Maybe my eyes are closed. Life still

needles through the water and I run

cupfuls of absence through my fingers.

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5. Malaria Consortium. The Challenges. Pregnant Women. http://www.malariaconsortium.org/pages/malaria_challenges.htm#Pregnant_Women