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Writer's pictureSylva

Chernobyl, Sanctuary

Updated: Feb 27, 2020

~Poem by Emily Dexter


I am standing in the shadows,

On the leaves blown into the room

Through broken windows, light glinting

Off the shards that remain.


I am traveling down a dirt path,

Landing my footsteps in the hoofprints

Of Przewalski’s horses, like a child

Following a father’s boot prints through snow.

Above me hangs the parchment of each leaf,

An overflowing library, and below, nature’s

Name rewritten in the cursive of tree roots.


I am clinging to a balcony railing, high

Above the forest-filled city, the motionless

Ferris wheel, the reactors still towering.

Downy wings rustle, the mother returning

To her chicks cheeping, hungry, on the ledge.

Twenty thousand years, they told us,

Of refuge, until the return of ringing

Telephones, of static, of every human noise.

 

Emily Dexter is a freshman Writing and Honors Humanities major with a minor in Spanish. She enjoys reading, knitting, and saying hello to all of the cats.

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