H A N N A WAT S O N
Sometimes in April the world turned its back on the rain that fell on rwanda in april 1994. raoul peck commemorated the genocide in his 2005 film: Sometimes in April on still nights or blue moons or saturdays, we tried to make sense of the tails of shooting stars, boyfriends, rain that falls Sometimes in April. this time, the candle waltzed with its shadow. smoke wandered to her room’s corners, hiding from the halo around the dim little screen. as the credits rolled, i sank into the music, reading names, collecting letters: i could piece them together better than dirty bloodstreams, orphans, machine guns. i watched her heart break behind her delicate eyes. lashes stuck together and tears anointed her face like rain that falls Sometimes in April. silence caught my breath before i could ask her if God cried over mangled bodies, war, shattered windows. her head felt lighter on my shoulder, her third piercing less rebellious, my mountains easier to move when i watched brothers rip nation, schoolgirls, tutsi apart. her room’s air knew me. it had surveyed the valleys between my goose bumps before. my pulse mourned in labored flashes; i couldn’t find answers in its telegrams, half-written poems. we wanted to escape, whisper of recipes, libraries, girlish things. but pain crept through cracks in her laptop, visions that return like rain that falls Sometimes in April. 7
