Eleven million people displaced.
Enough photos of rubble and bloodied faces to picture-pave the path from Aleppo to Lesbos.
Her path
to arrive at our table, where she—singular statistic, number named—stirs her tea and pinches in her polite smile those punishing years.
This month’s microprose challenge was to write a 49-word story beginning with the word “seven” and ending with the word “years”.
kathunk 
One of my favourite poems is Not-so-good Earth by Bruce Dawe, and this has similar features to that poem — you (and Dawe) take the reader from a global perspective, distanced and clinical, to a very personal, very immediate and familiar one. You do it really well.
Thanks, Asha. I looked up this poem, and it’s so jarring with the contrasting words/scenes and (does it count as irony or) satirical apathy; it will stick with me for sure.
Brilliant in its sparseness and brutal reality, isn’t it? Dawe has been a favourite poet of mine for such a long time.
I liked the contrast: the matter-of-fact reporting in the first few sentences, and then the switch to the personal.
The transition is very neatly done!
Thanks Sara!
There was something about the use of “picture-pave” that really spoke to me. It pulled me from a vision of a road long, anonymous road into the faces of the people who travel it.
Asha stole my comment, really. It felt like you were zooming in from a distance to focus on the individual, who then represented – and put a face on – the larger tragedy.
Thanks, Christine, and thanks for the editor’s pick. It’s good to know the focus/zoom affect worked so well.
I love “picture-pave” and the poetic language of Saleema’s description. Really powerful.
Thanks, Laura. I definitely used some of the tricks from Nate’s class for choosing words carefully for this piece.
Love “picture-pave” (for being vivid and later the consonance in path/punishing/polite/pinched.
Also, the single use of italics.
Well done & congrats!
Thanks, Jaimie!