This is a random poem that wrote, but I never got to turn it in for class. It’s based on a brief encounter I had with two little muslim kids while I was in Jordan 3 years ago.

 

Dusty, well traveled feet,

Rosy cheeks, painted and peeled by a hot Middle Eastern sun.

The children of a wanderer, our hearts now wander too

Starving for something new.

We vacuum up crumbs from the table of strangers

Whose rapid foreign words are spat into the air

And left hanging there, wasting.

We wish we could grasp the words,

But we reach out and wrap our fingers around someone else’s wallet instead.

Then we scamper away unnoticed

Parting ways with the strangers before we can realize

That we are the same.