When Eedo Laki
saw me for the first time,
her mouth robbed me of my name
and replaced it with my father’s.
The Arabic sat sweet
between her tongue and teeth.
She addressed me
with glee and haunt
fencing in the nucleus of her eyes.

Wails filled the humid air.
Nameless faces
that looked like my own
approached the girl
whose belly hung full,
who fashioned half-broken
spectacles that dangled
on her nose
like frankincense farmers
on mountain tops.

Abo said he’d never return home
but today my face became a vessel.
I became a poem.
Transcended colonial border lines.
Spoke a language with all the wrong grammar.
But sorry and thank you
sounds the same in every tongue.
I’m rectifying relationships lost
in communication,
connecting those stood above
and those sleeping below the soil.