Two Countries

Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, known
as this-color-or-that but never blue.
Skin learned to ask for water still
with that meal in a restaurant
which smelled of the market street,
before coming back to sleep
on it's side of the bed;
in a world that started later
than it's own, looking at a different
moon from a different window.

Skin was the boisterous laughter,
shared meals and happy love songs
like a prayer before bedtime,
one from it's prized stamp collection.
Now Skin is that on the top-right
corner of postcards sent halfway
across the globe. But Skin had hope.
Love means you breathe in two countries,
one where you are and one to
call your own, for people are
not places, but people become homes.


[PS:
I wrote this poem as a sort of tribute and with inspiration from one of my recent favourite poems of the same name by Naomi Shihab Nye. I'm going to try and write a poem-a-day, even though it's not April and I probably don't have a whole month for my very own NaPoWriMo. But I have hope.]