In Nepal / So Hum

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

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