Bag of Life

                                                    Bag of Life
            There I sat watching the world around me move to the beat of dead. A bag, whose cloth was once made up of delicate silk, now made of the cries of despair. I could still feel my mother’s embrace when she held me close to her. The rhythms of her body joining my own and us walking down the road with our heads held high. Living long days filled with sunny laughs and smiles.
            Oh yes, how could I ever forget that day when the sun never shined. The day when my life changed forever. I felt smoke and cries of the frightened running through my clean fibers. The blood of the weak staining my skin. The loud shrills of the guns ringing through the mountain tops. The drums of struggle beating harder and faster. Sweat rolling down people’s cheeks. And then the small cry of my mother, falling into the hands of death. Her body landed on me, pressing my face into the dirty ground. I couldn’t breath, I thought it was my time too, but a woman whose face was made of burns, came and took me away from my silent mother. I was passed on from one hand to another. With each hand, a tear rolled down their face onto my own and together we cried. It became quiet and still. The scared drums began a song of mourning. The night became lost with the day’s light. Life began to move forward to the sound of the weeping drums.
          I knew the times of love and happiness had died with all the people whose bodies lay on the ground. I shivered and hugged my body. My silk cloth was burned and torn. My old life had gone and here I was, alone. With trembling fingers I un tightened the string around my neck that had been dipped in blood and found my faith, a cross of gold. It showed me to a place where I could live in peace and be loved by one who would never leave, one who would become my family for the rest of my life. I found a small flag of my people who had been murdered, whose struggles to be free were taken by the enemy of the jungles to the south and a flag that had united our pains and lives. I touched a drum that trembled to the beat of life. Its rhymes flowed through my veins and guided me throughout life. I retied the string and went down the unknown path.
          Theses three gifts of my past have followed me to where I sit here to day. My wounds have been patched up by pieces of clothes made of up of the different people who have found and held me close to them. Although I long to be the beautiful silk bag that I once was, I am now a patched bag.  My patches show my knowledge of blood, faith, cries, love and many other things. I can now walk down the street with my bag, which is filled with my life and not be ashamed of my past but proud.