Sixty-Five

Strength comes from smiling.

Smiling, he showed us the deep lines that
run around his wrists like stubborn indents,
a mark for the memories, unwilling to
reshape into soft smooth skin. He

smiled and told us of imprisonment,
of walking 23 (hold up 2 fingers, then 3)
days over hills (wavy motion of the old, worn
butter tea colored hands) and I, in my
ignorance, could not stop staring at the way his
bottom row of teeth melted together in a yellowness
not unlike the sun.

smiling he said he has two sons, one whose age
escaped me on the way from his lips to the space where
i hear (in my ears, or further in) and another one
6 and 6-- yes, that's 6 years and 6 months. oh you
mean 6 and a half?

Here is good! Here is freedom! Say
these mantras and never never forget, these
stories, these lifetimes, the pain- my
mother father brother, they are back where
policemen are scary and
they will beat a little boy with no
backpack on his shoulders. where women...
his sentence trailed off somewhere in his
omnipresent smile. some words never
need to be said]

why do you smile so much when you have
so little? i wanted to ask him, still staring
blatantly, patiently at his yellow-sun golden-fried
teeth. even his black eyebrows, thick and smooth like
generous paint strokes, they smiled too.
see me? he said, i am not happy
nor am i home[ i suppose

for a homeless nomad that cannot
roam where he pleases,
a permanent smile becomes
portable freedom