Daniela Oana - Poet and Photographer

 

Post-Ceaușescu 

   

There were tanks beyond my back

There were soldiers standing tall

Rifles held with ringéd hands

Feet were present but minds home

 

There I stood before them all

With my sister at my side

With Orthodox church candles

Held in our girlish young hands

Burning, flickering to death.

Hardened wax was caught crying

Symbolizing their remembrance

 

We wore thick stockings,

Pleated skirts, knit cardigans

And post-Revolution smiles

For a black and white photograph

 

It was nineteen-eighty-nine

Communism and men fell

We could play outside again

Nobody, now, shot close to home

 

The dictator’s execution echoed

Through the automatic fire

Set on the machine guns

Sure to hit and not to miss

Neither him, nor wife Elena.
It was over. It was Christmas day

The gunned Opera House sung

An aria still resounding today.
The gunned-down men’s wives wept

As did our mothers for their bloodshed.

The outdoor-playing children laughed.

I laughed. With Luiza and Larisa

 

I found it puzzling mother cried

While live footage that December aired
The Bad Guy gone was good, I thought!

 

Twenty-six years later
I fight tears for those two deaths

I once innocently deemed as “good.”

 

Dad never got to light a candle

Already having fled for us.

I shall forever stand a little girl

From the big city of Bucharest,

Romania.