Caught his eye
Walking in the mid day heat
In Bhaktapur.
Faraway – – look
Both of us a little like strangers,
Though he was born here
In his dusty gem encased by mountains
Cradled in the mist
He’d since
Seen the sea in Spain
& there gaining a new life
Lost some of the old
the cold mornings when he’d run laps around the pokhari with the other boys. One was always fastest – ran two times around before he could finish one.
We sit at its side now, smoking our cigarettes,
& I can’t tell how he feels
when he says that the children playing in the streets
Are foreign to him now.
by Aoife Higgins