He left with his baby brother, his mother, sisters, aunty, grandma.

They left in darkness. Crack of branches underfoot, of gunfire beyond the trees.

He was six, the oldest boy. He’d seen soldiers shooting people in his village, accusing them of siding with the rebels. He’d seen his father crumple to the ground.

His sister tried to make it like a game: We are ghosts, we make no noise, we float like leaves. Can you be a better ghost than me?

Five nights through the jungle. Five days holding still, hiding. Even their shadows had to hide.

Then the border, the camp on the other side.

The children grew taller than their Mama. The grandma died.

The oldest boy, the one who sits before me now, became a man.

They could not settle in the camps. Could not leave to look for work. Could only wait, take what was given.

Though sometimes he did sneak out, in search of food, or a short-term job.

And then they got the papers. They’d been cleared to set new roots. Here, in America’s rocky soil.

Jennifer L. Freed’s

is the author of When Light Shifts: A Memoir in Poems, a finalist for the 2022 Sheila Margaret Motton book prize. In the 2025 Eric Hoffer Book Awards, her memoir received three distinctions: finalist for the Medal Provocateur, second place for Legacy Non-fiction, and Grand Prize short list. Her poems appear in Atlanta Review, Rust and Moth, Sheila-na-Gig, Vox Populi, What the House Knows, and others, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. She writes, teaches, and facilitates workshops from Massachusetts.

Author’s website: https://jfreed.weebly.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Gravity, Ms. Freed’s first haibun, published in MacQueen’s Quinterly (Issue 28, April 2025)

⚡ Six Words in an Ellen Bass Poem Take Me Back To My Brother’s Hospital Room in Atlanta Review (Spring/Summer 2025)

⚡ List of Publications at the author’s website