Two Rivers
A Poem
In the grey country I don’t leave my shoes at the door, But I soften my name for strangers, I dress for grey weather, This grey pallid weather, Still my displaced sillhouette never changes.
I have folded my tongue into careful shapes, Redrawn the borders of my breath, But my shadow is brown, Cardamom-brown, and speaks with a dusty accent.
In rooms full of greyer people, I keep my face beneath a face. If faith must master discretion, Can 'home' ever be such a place?
But the moment I slip the periphery, She is already walking east, toward a language that rolls off the tongue, toward two rivers that remember me.
Thank you, Zahra, so so beautiful
As an immigrant living in Seattle for over 30 years, walking between here and there in my dreams, a wanderer, yet not, writing as far West as one can get from my home county, your poem hit home.