Scrap

The line for the tent wasn’t taut; it drooped down the stained canvas and into the mud.

-      The mud wasn’t a flat layer of earth, wet from rain;

-      The mud wasn’t a solid colour that would remind one of the mountains or the sky;

-      The mud wasn’t like clay that could be moulded into toys.

A family slept inside,

like they had the night before and the day before and the night before.

What else was there?

They could come out in ancestral colours for foreigners to drop coins in their bucket.

They could wander to the edge where wires kept them in, a refuge, a jail, all the same thing.

Or, they could wander down to the stream which was the colour of water

That shimmied and shook..