cambodia 5

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-

side by side - 

a child toddling and a young girl falling back into the pit,

her skull extracted and displayed now on this shelf. 

How do I walk out of here now

to become a teacher? 

I knew of Hitler, but not the Pol Pot 

himself a school teacher. 

I take a deep breath and walk into a classroom of torture 

a secondary school once - 

how pale my own classrooms,

how bright and plastic

against the liquid terror that must have once flooded this place - 

S21. 

I turn and walk now into 

the Killing Fields 

I have walked in

and I cannot walk out 

even now, at 44.