I just finished reading “Kite Runner” by Khaled Hossen. It was a wonderful story. What I mean is the writing was good but it did not blow my socks off. The story however took risks, it challenged me. The characters are still in my head. I am wondering right now if they are alive or dead. If they exist somewhere in the pile of rubble we once called Afghanistan, a place my country blew to bits b/c people were killed. One death always equals more death, the equation never balances out.

I am not political. I was raised by a Senator. I ate with a president once. I am wondering about the risks my poetry takes. If I cut the words to the bone they’d say I lived in a country for a short time where people died, because they were not American. The people were Haitian and they’d watch The Price Is Right in a store window, they’d say, Your country is bright, your country is shiny. And it was all those things and it was not.

If I write everything down I’d say they killed your brother, murdered your mother and snuck you over the mountain in a wooden box. Because you were born in the North and not the South, now you cry out in your sleep, you wake with your body curled in a ball, a ball small enough to fix in a box.

You are the most difficult one to love. To tolerate some days. The people in the book are easy. I take them to bed and they do not speak. Even the people I watched die are easier because eventually the dead have nothing to say.

The living expect us to know the answers. To add the equation. Two parts equal the whole unless of course they do not. If we begin the problem with fractions we are already lost.