by Stacey Torres

Created on: November 29, 2010   Last Updated: December 17, 2010

Blindly, I walk through the city streets of Atlanta

My eyes glazed over with visions not of you and your friends

Laughing giddy and joyous in your glasses of wine and

Bowls of food piled obscenely into boxes to go

Go where?

Home?

My home in a land so far from here holds no warm or

Comforting morsels to greet me as I step cautiously

Through mines and traps and torturous dreams so

Violent in the night.

I pass you in my regimental march not once

Not twice, maybe three or four times

My thin black fingers crisp and taught

Grasp my cheap purse slung over my shoulder so

Long it is fused to my dejected shoulders.

I spy the Styrofoam coffin that holds a tiny taste

Of what you can't begin to force into your now full belly

Parched, burned and scarred from

My home in a land so far away,

My skin sags lifelessly

No longer nourished and I, a black empty shell

Crawls through the streets of Georgia

Starving for food,

Starving for comfort

Starving for compassion and love

And safety in the Arms of Liberty that shuns me because

My home is in a land so far away

Ravished by war and dissent and evil.

You see me see you, and we speak

Without words as you silently abandon your Styrofoam

Sarcophagus of overly decadent food

Without our eyes meeting, we read each others' soul

And you know my pain, if not for a brief moment

My dignity begs your pardon and I reach inside

The sacred box of carry-out jewels

And taste the pulse of Georgia so far from

My home in a land so far away.

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