"A Single Slice Reveals Them" a poem by Niomi Shihab Nye

An apple on the table hides its seeds
so neatly
under seamless skin.

But we talk and talk and talk
to let somebody
in.

This poem is related to the book A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier because it tell us how a person can hide who they truly are inside but if you spend even five minuets with that person you will be able to see who they are and not what they seem to be. In the book Ishmael Beah has been sent to a reform camp after being taken from the Sierra Leone Army and starts to be haunted by the memories of all the killing and dead bodies he has seen. As a soldier he hides the weaker, more open kid inside him. The staff in the facility refuse to let him go through his life without opening up so they continue to tell him it not his fault for being the way he is and continue to trying to open him up. Ishmael himself wants to be the way he was before he was forced to snort lines and shoot rounds but he is so brainwashed he believes that it is impossible for him. It will take along time for him and a relentless intervention for him be finaly open up and be a kid again.