Giddy with the thrill of an unplanned holiday,
I’m in Phnom Pen with 3 Americans I hardly know
(coz the fourth pulled out at the last minute),
Just 21, with the world unfurling before us,
we head straight to the tourist attractions.
Shelf after shelf of skulls line the book case
and I cannot turn away from the 10,000 eyes,
eye sockets,
trained on me
I see myself, staring at myself,
in a space so quiet
I feel terror walking beside me
gazing at the displays together with me, and then at me
The years telescope back to 1978, 1981.
I see myself babbling, gurgling,
dashing ahead in a walker
when people were piling into mass graves here.
Was there a sound?
My own mind is a black and white TV,
playing a silent horror film -
wherw side by side
a child toddles in a HDB flat, and a young girl falls back into a pit here,
her skull extracted and displayed now on this shelf.
I walk away, gutted
mind seared still
with the grinning skulls.
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