Behind the poem:
While in Iraq, I taught a little bit of English & played a lot of (chaotic) games with the kids of a Yazidi family. Over months, they became my brothers, sisters, & family. My sister wrote this poem from my perspective based on the stories, pictures, & videos I shared with her. She wrote the words I couldn’t.
How to describe a place so different
From any I have ever known.
The kind of different that brings tears,
Tears of laughter, tears of joy,
Tears of heartbreak at the thought of leaving.
I’ve searched, and searched, yet never find,
Sufficient words for my love of that place
Or for the people that greet me there
I hope the little I have to say
Can capture a piece of my heart,
Left with those kids, in that room.
The walls, bright, crisp white, have stains
That tell of the lives spent in their embrace.
Not much adorns the concrete floor:
Long cushions line the edges,
Waiting for meals and company,
For laughter and the joy of loved ones.
In the eyes of a child, are they simply seats?
Or the barricades of a fortress?
A dangerous sea to trespass across?
To those children, the room in its simplicity
Is a world of endless possibility.
How different our hours together
Have changed over the many months.
Our shared meals are no longer shy or quiet
But full of boisterous conversation,
That comes only from a friendship,
Made in the confines of that same room.
Surely a meal is the greatest place
To form such a lasting tie.
Enough memories to fill a book, bind us.
Even a thousand books I could fill,
With the joy, the love, the sorrow.
Their smiling faces, forever in my mind:
Danny in his suit, or running to the dukan
Delighted in the little he is proud to have.
Amir, fleeing to another life to help
His family that sits around me.
Deana, always serving, always caring.
Each of them unique, each of them beloved.
How can this life, my life for so long,
Be gone in just a moment?
How will a single day pass by
Not wrapping my arms around them?
To some, it may seem strange
That in so short a time I could come
To share this bond of love with children,
Who hardly understand the words I speak.
Perhaps it would seem strange to me,
Those many months ago when first I met them.
But after hours together in that room,
Laughing, playing, singing, talking
Nothing could be more natural
Than that those beloved children
Have become to me another family.
Little did I know, the moment that I met them
How hard it would be to say goodbye.
My heart swells with thoughts of their faces
And thoughts of our time, together in that room.
