They walk before the dawn,
their shadows long and trembling,
carrying children on their shoulders
like gusts of wind that remember
too many journeys.
The road bends like a question
they have no answer for, dust rising
to meet their lips, dust that tastes
of hunger and memory.
Each step is a drumbeat thudding
against the silence of villages they left
behind, houses emptied of laughter
and fields cleared of hope.
They hum songs fading at the edges
of memory but the children remember
songs of water, of home, of mothers
who don’t break even when life
stiffens into stone.
At night they rest under tree shades,
their arms full of sleeping weight, eyes
closed but listening for the footsteps
of tomorrow that may or may not come.
The moon follows them quietly,
holding their path in silver hands,
and the wind whispers all the names
they cannot speak aloud.
The road moves with them, a ribbon
of longing unspooling toward a sky
still waiting, patient, for their return.