we are not the last ones
I always change my trains at the same station
sometimes I see the same faces
everyday
and today I did not feel
like getting out of the train
more like falling out of it
and
under the tracks
but the animal that lives within me
is strong
and thirsty
and so it keeps me going
and so I rise
and so you will rise too
and millions after you
as millions have before you
I saw a brown man on the platform
with dishevelled hair
and a pale blue shirt
I saw his frailty
he had a stick and his body was shaking
a little bit to the left
there was weakness in his leg
so I walked over to him and we climbed the stairs together
and so I took his hand
and he smiled with his eyes and lips
and even his nose smiled
sparkling tenderness of the old age
I walked him home
and he thought
that I made his day
into something better
but no
he made mine
I was growing up with a boy
this cousin of mine
a half-Arab child and a half-black child
both unfit
for the white schoolyard
two mixed dogs
bits of my blood combined with his
through our mothers
he lost his father
a ghost father
but a father
nevertheless
and 2 weeks after that
he got himself into a car accident
and now he spends his days in his bedroom
cut and bruised
no one knows
if it was the glass that cut him
or the loss
he does not want to speak to anyone
he only sleeps
and I love him
in his bent sorrow
and I love him
in his weakness
I miss
the floods of laughter of our short childhood
this human work
that we need to survive on
those tricks of others
that you cannot bear
there is light in all this
even if it is a faint one.
