Most days, all I ask is for beauty
and some days, I even have the strength
to seek it out.
I have learned over and over that it rarely exists
at the bottom of a bottle, at the end
of a cigarette, or in a dawn
reached with someone else. But
too often I have driven home alone,
ending my night as the world is awakening,
stopping to buy a pack from a man who is also searching
for beauty in a land he wishes he could call his own.
I envy him, even behind that convenience store
counter at six o’clock in the morning.
He, at least, has chosen this life, he has
worked hard for the little he has attained.
I wonder which ship or plane has taken
me so far from my promised land, how I
could have accidentally strayed so far
from home – even as I know I have been running
for as long as my feet have touched the earth.
I nod to the dark eyes and
brown skin of the man behind the counter.
I feel like he must know where I have been,
as if his return gaze is screaming at me:
harlot
harlot
demon of the night.
I am ashamed to stand for my nation,
for my future, even as I am ashamed
for it to stand for me, for it to be
the bombs that have driven this man here,
to be selling cigarettes to me too
early in a contemptuous morning.
I swallow the taste of things I have done
and now cannot control, and the taste of
things I have done nothing to stop.
I have spoken of being a strong woman; I
have stood on street corners and denounced the
nation I am proud to call my home.
I have hated all of us
for letting me down.
I have loved
because I cannot do otherwise.
Most days, all I ask is for beauty.
Some days, I even have the strength
to seek it out.