Book of the Little Axe

by Lauren Francis-Sharma

He felt he was a man with an innocent boy’s heart, a boy with a man’s wicked desires.

“Those who eat their own death will eat another’s life.”

“I wish to die—I wish my children to die—in battle, like warriors, not like this,” Ma whispered. “A woman shouldn’t wish to die in battle.” “I live in a world with men, Victor, so I fight.” Ma directed his eyes to the women upon the hill. “Look at their paint. Red for war, yellow for hope. Sometimes Breath demands that you war to have her.”

“Wherever we are, we toil in dirt that we come to think of as beautiful, we defend against hostiles, and we begin again when the earth where we settle does not provide what we need.”

“Love has no quarrel. Love sits high, like we sat today, watching anger and disappointment from afar,” he said. “Of course, this love t’ing is a burden too. A very big one.” He laughed. “Once it lights, the torch is carried forever, even when wrongs are committed, even when your heart aches because it is so open. How to love and not break is a question that won’t be answered in my lifetime, for sure.”

Made me think that maybe the world could be somethin to behold rather than somethin to overcome.

I also come to know that the writer of a history aint have to tell nothin that might make his ownself look bad.

And it aint come without him bein frightened that his own way of lookin at the world might could be undone by knowin theirs.

Another era would have made no difference, for it seemed no mother in the span of humanity could accept responsibility for inflicting harm on her child when she believed her intent was honorable.