The Betrayal

The wetness of my bed woke me up before I heard the commotion around me

I put my hand to my eyes more out of confusion than anything else

Then I felt it, my room was wet, dark and cold, something wasn’t right

My hand went from my face to my chest; eyes wide open in fear…..

“My Child! Where is my daughter?”

I quickly jump out of bed and land into a pool of water,

I slip and fall out of shock and the ice coldness

I get back on my feet before I even bother to think of what is happening,

I open my door and more water seems to flow towards me

Where did this come from?

Who did this?

I have to find my child

Now I hear the noise, people are shouting names

Not so bright reflections from Flashlights I see through the window

I shout out my daughter’s name,

I run down my hallway towards her room

I shout again and I still don’t get a response

Her door is ajar and she isn’t there

My fear can’t be real, my raging heartbeat threatening to burst through my ears

My front door is wide open and I run outside

The water seems to be getting higher,

I walk around blindly, shouting my child’s name

There is something terribly wrong

The screams are louder, the fear in the air can be sliced

My neighbors are running, mothers are yelling, children are crying

Some are trying but failing to hold on to some belongings

I see an old man just stand in the corner, looking up into the sky, hands raised

He doesn’t seem to be making any effort to escape like other people

The chaos I see stops me in my tracks; holding on to my gate as I stand chest deep in water

I have never seen this before; I feel like I'm about to have a heart attack…….

 

……….it’s been 4 days and I can’t find my daughter.

I’m sitting on the floor in a makeshift refugee camp for displaced people

“Displaced? Four days ago I had a home, a child and a thriving business and now I’m called a displaced person?”

I still have on my body the T-shirt and wrapper I fell asleep in the night before that dreadful experience

I wandered in the floods looking for my child, no one came to help me, I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep and now I’m sure I didn’t breathe

For I was dead, something left me the day I moved through the dirty water that refused to go away looking for my daughter.

 I walked into something, I thought it was just floating clothes so I moved it away with my hand but my finger got hooked and as I tried to remove it I recognized what I had touched- a body, long dead and almost completely decomposed.

I looked up and realized I had wandered into a cemetery, the floods had moved bodies out of their place.

I turned and walked towards another direction, there was no need to scream, no one would hear or help. What difference would expressing disgust make? I had a child to find…….

………The ground had literally shifted beneath us

 

It’s been 13 days, I found my child, I found her body

She has swollen to double her size, she has gone dark and her once flawless skin looks stretched

I sit and stare at her for a long time, fighting anyone who tries to take her away from me

There are no more tears.

I had cleared a path for my child; a perfect journey totally different yet better than the one I’ve had to walk

And now she’ll never get to her destination.

She was all I had, my best friend; wise beyond her years; always seeing through the hard front I put up as her only parent

We saved each other from everything…….apparently not this one

This was beyond the strength I had ‘built’ over the years, I had no control

She has never been afraid of water, even in the bath tub as a baby

The cool breeze that accompanied the closeness of the water to our house,

She always loved to take walks and feel the serenity the water brought

And now it had turned its back on her, taking away the life she didn’t owe it

Within seconds, without warning, a beautiful blessing had become an ugly curse………