Poem: You Were Sixteen
© 2012 by Alice Walker
You were sixteen
and on your way to pick up
your birthday
cake.
My partner offers
photographs
of your battered
head
that I cannot
view.
You have died under the blows.
Look at the soldier
he says
when he sees
my eyes
are turning away:
Sixteen too,
perhaps.
Dressed in the olive
drab
of her country’s
police; too young
to imagine
as she poses
above her kill
that she has murdered
a dream of youth
that will haunt
her
her whole life.
