“Evgeny and Evgeniia faced an excruciating choice. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers told the couple they could leave the United States with their child and return to their native Russia, which they had fled seeking political asylum. Or they could remain in immigration detention in the United States — but their 8-year-old son, Maksim, would be taken away and sent to a shelter for unaccompanied children. In the end, they chose the agony of limbo in the United States over a return to a place where they saw no prospect for freedom or any future for their family... The last time Evgeny and Evgeniia saw Maksim was on May 15” —The New York Times, August 5, 2025. New York Times photo of Evgeny, Evgeniia, and Maksim.
Sophie’s Choice seemed light-years from our time,
a fading tragedy that made us weep
for Streep.
But now with tactics changing on a dime
in brutal ways we thought could not repeat,
sick heat
pervades my belly and begins to climb:
how can we keep denying what it means
when scenes
unspool of parents, guilty of no crime,
compelled to choose the thing that they most fear,
right here?
Melissa Balmain edits Light, North America's longest-running journal of comic verse. Her latest book of poetry is Satan Talks to His Therapist (Paul Dry Books).
