A man of brittle sticks
With sun-starved complexion,
Except in the face
And perhaps the hands,
Enters my home from
Someplace I might have
Remembered from geography
Had I not been writing
Love letters in my workbook.
He sits at my table
And I offer him meat to eat
And tea to drink,
Which he accepts hesitantly
Eyes darting around
As if tied by string
To a fly in the room.
I offer more but
He refuses my kindness,
And I push back
With full heart and
Stern eyes to offer again,
But all he says is
“It’s OK, it’s OK.”
No one really understands
What someone else
Means when they put
Something into
Our atmosphere;
Everyone has their own eyes
And their own ears
That they don’t share
Very often
Because they don’t know how.
There’s nothing really new
About this new person,
Just like the rest in how
Dissimilar he is,
But so very different
In how he is different
From me.
Composed 06/26/2012
Author’s Note: I decided to write about myself from the eyes of my Mongolian family. I’m not sure how successful I was in gaining insight into how they view me, my world, and their world, but it was interesting to remove myself from myself for a while.
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