Maura H. Harrison, ‘Her Matted Hair’ – 1st Place Award
Her Matted Hair
For sixteen months, Ms. Chen remained detained.
It was a crippling time, her body strained
By torture and neglect. It left her weak
And worsening. It left her slow to speak.
It left her muddled, her four hundred and
Seventy-nine dark days jumbled by hand,
Plundered by hands. The inmates beat her at
The guards’ commands—cruel craven bureaucrats—
And finally, it left her wheel-chair bound.
She said, “I have to crawl to move around.”
Before a judge, some guards, her parents too,
Some days before she died, her voice came through:
She shouted one last time, “Falun Dafa is good.
Forbearance, truthfulness, compassion is good.”
I don’t know how Ms. Chen was treated later.
Did brutal fury pulverize with greater
Zeal? Did a single witness say a prayer
Or try to touch her tangled, matted hair?
What does compassion look like when your eyes
Are swollen shut? Can truth be heard in cries
Reduced to whispered gasps and groans? And how
Does patient waiting dab the battered brow?
Perhaps, when all is blurred, perspective grants
A consolation, faces orbed by glance,
The shining presence of a precious soul,
A truth that swells the heart, that makes one whole.
Transferred to prison on November fifth,
Ms. Chen began her sentence—five years with
A fine. But on November eighth, Ms. Chen
Was transferred to the hospital, and when
Her parents reached her, she was dead.
“No sign of life upon arrival” said
A doctor, privately. They cried and held
Her crumbled hands. They cried as heartache swelled.
Truth, for Ms. Chen, flowed from her open lips—
Viscous and black—true signs of courage, drips
Of dare,
drips mixing with her matted hair.
* * *