I live across a field where they sell old things.
I live two miles from where you live.
There used to be a tree I loved and a squirrel
who crosses the telephone wire every morning
from one tree to another, to another.
For days now it has been grey and white outside.
I forget how brown my skin is, how black my hair.
My blood inside me grows like a tangle of bushes
I spied outside the kitchen window in Chittagong
where beyond dark corridors, my mother
wrapped in blankets today as though forever
sleeps.
And the hand moving
draws us closer.