May day in Berlin | poem

poetry

her grandmother has dreadlocks;

she grew tired of doing her hair

after all those years of brush and straighten—

twist and curl.

a granny to two

on the father’s side of a cross-culture

bi-lingual family.

I met her once, in a dream I can’t fully remember

by a border crossing with no fence.

she looked at me, with rheumy eyes

and said, and spoke

without a hint of hesitation:

there isn’t any water here; I think you stole my dream.

was it the smoothness of her caramel skin that made

ivory teeth appear like submarines

through the dirt road tracks that spread across the border?

what I felt in her

were many things, I did not feel in myself.

we shared little more in common

than what life had already shown us.