He makes me sit next to him, so I inquire—
as if remembering his own smallness
would prevent him from violating another’s—
about his childhood. Cape Cod, he recalls:

how lonely he felt among the blue expanse
each winter, longed to travel, so he joined
the Marines. And I did travel, he fools,
all the way to Afghanistan. When I tell him

that’s where I’m from, his laugh crumbles,
and I am sorry for a trembling in me
or in him, I can’t tell. Too chagrined to look
at his face, I observe krumholz, blurs

of frozen buds. Afghans are good people,
though, he disarms himself. And damn,
that food. But I loathe my Afghan blood,
especially here, amid snowy balsam firs

and cookie-cutter houses. They saved,
you know, his words butter me, my life—
gave me bread, warmth. They didn’t
have to. Bad things happened. Awful

things. Nothing is calmer today: Kabul
still mourns contaminated water,
and another suicide bomber. I shouldn’t
tell you this, but, he coughs—I miss

it sometimes. The provinces were so hot—
it was like another planet. I will never
feel at ease here, between subalpine hills, gas
stations advertising Nescafe and Dove.

But after eight years on the base, his voice
clear as a fist, you wake up, hating
the person in the mirror. Now my life
is about forgetting. Is memory a privilege?

I couldn’t, after I arrived in the States,
remember a single damn village. Is it a sin,
then, to be envious that my driver
had a home in my home—yellow dust on long,

mountainous roads, where twenty-two civilians
died in the fourth attack this month—for longer
than I ever did? He has, I feel, estranged me.
You know, I hear his heavy, American voice

crack like a creek thawing under a deer, it’s good
to be back. The unspeakable opens between us
its waters, cold, full of shame, until we drift apart
again, never asking for each other’s names.