They were on a field trip.

They sat still in the cabin as in the classroom.

‘Stay still, stay still’.

The children were still as ordered,

like screws waiting to be assembled on a conveyor belt.

Wearing their life jackets, they waited.

But it was a factory uniform of capitalism.

‘Move, move, move’,

If someone had said this,

if only they had opened the doors and windows,

that classroom would not have become a huge grave.

They were on a field trip.

Name tags and bags,

floors of shattered classrooms

all floating in waves.

Each child had a beautiful name,

but for those who wanted to keep the ship,

it was only a name of unknown existence.

They had parents who loved them,

but their end were the same, all the same–

a cold, broken, dead body.

The three words they would have urgently

spat out, which became bubble letters.

"I'll miss you."

They were locked in the water jail,

wearing the shroud with a fake name;

‘life jacket’.

They were on a field trip.

But you taught them death, not life.

There are still children in the classroom.

The legs that cannot escape from

under the desk, under the chair.

Fingers found broken.

Nails scratching the window.

Now I wonder.

Whose hand holds the ax to break the window?

I–Death

They ask children to stay still.

‘You’ll be safe’, they reassure them.

Children joke Titanic,

their final traces on this very world.

Laughters fade into uneasiness,

selfies become keepsakes,

phones record voicemails,

jokes give way to necessity,

fingers lock between hands,

teeth clenching in silence,

water replaces air.

Waiting. Worrying. Confusing. Grasping. Fearing. Trembling. Panting. Shrieking. Struggling. Stumbling. Pushing. Hurting. Moaning. Groaning. Clutching. Choking. Shoving. Bellowing. Banging. Smashing. Scraping. Breaking. Wailing. Gasping, gasping, gasping for air,

then silence.

Stillness.

II–Rescue

Birds fly over the wreckage.

They send men on a mission–

to punish the sea with oxygen.

Underwater Santa Clauses

carry gifts of theurgical breaths,

and nectarous lullabies of singing bubbles

for lost children to follow in the dark,

and dive into the blue,

where the rampage of the evils

has just ended.

The sea, frightened by the men

stops its singing of death’s prelude.

Hands seek hands.

Heavenly prayers–the luscious song of bubbles

flow through cabin and aisle mazes,

calling the lost souls of innocency.

Rooms camouflage into water jails,

souls forever to be imprisoned.

III–After

A sad butterfly sits on the chest of politicians,

a sad butterfly who has lost its place and cannot fly.

I cannot bear to place that ribbon on my chest.