I could tell he did not fit into a checkbox
the same way he could tell I couldn't place either
our names betray us, our features
turn to bite our necks
but he was graceful in asking about the soil
that made me, not my mother's rib
or my father's tired eyes
it was land,
this attachment to city names
in smaller cities with bigger communities and less eyes
to directly look into your window without permission
I had allowed him the lookout
he had brown eyes
the kind of brown that tells a story
of a land not his own, in a land where he lives
tied to those who look and talk like him and me
where is home, we constantly ask
from privilege and badly conceived metaphors
answer with half-hearted phrases
a completion of previous understatements
he had thick black hair but soft hands
the same hands that let my blood freeze
instead of boil over: all we need is tiny reminders
here and there of people spread away from us
like wind-blown seeds
because the sounds in one person's throat
change with the formation of phrases
to understand, to make more
there's a story for every dance
there's a resemblance of those who left
making me unable to accept
what I know I have lost for sure.
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