You should be proud/
Of your nomadic optimism
Like an argument that runs
Through my lungs
I who wish you would stay/
With me, my little overflowed veins
Glad enough to be in your service
You should be proud
You are able to silence
The heart of your attachment/
Bolder, you’ve silenced them
Haven’t you? My thousand heart-beats
That didn’t know how to bloom/
I watch you, like a red flower
At the train station, where I gasped
At how you flee, another country
Another city, another poem/
You should be proud
That you are a foreigner, that you belong
Everywhere, anywhere, a bright gold flower
Like an Asian in New York City
You know how to run, and/
You have filled me with poems to the brink
You should be proud, you know how
To slip under the gates and stuff
Your pockets with that last cigarette/
The last time I Saw you, you helped
Me escape, in leather and jeans
From Latin names, and psychoactive mushrooms
You should be proud, though I can’t secure
The rumor of your subtle flattery/
My poetic neck is marked
With tattoos of your courage
Strung up on tightropes, you possess/
Qualities of translation, I couldn’t dream to have
There is no equal opportunity between us
We are just different, strangers
Lost in the crowds, the tango and language
Of all that I loved, yet could never possess.
Wuji Seshat 