You won’t return 

to the hand-woven sheep wool blanket

your mother made you. 

Or carry it,

for it will weigh you down 

and leave no room for water.  

You will travel 

where you won’t know 

the word for bread, or work or love. 

Accept the staleness 

of what is given. 

Say your last goodbye 

to your father 

on a faulty phone line 

with other voices breaking through, 

as if, you were all channeled 

to a simultaneous seance.

You will 

eat alone 

travel alone 

live alone 

birth alone 

be sick alone 

mourn alone 

But, you will also learn 

that home is a state of being; 

communication 

is more than words. 

That you can’t care 

for a withering Chrysanthemum — 

or a dying spouse or friend — 

until you’ve worn pain

like your Sunday best. 

That you can’t, honestly, tell someone, 

You’ll be okay, whatever happens

      until you’ve squeezed 

      your broken body 

      through a bus’s shattered window, 

      across the lifeless body 

      of a woman

      you were just sharing crackers with — 

      a bus teetering on a cliff 

      3,000 feet above sea level, 

      in a country that is no longer yours — 

come to other side and ask, 

Where do I go, now?