Moshtarak

You came in combat shorts
controlling attention
my American,
Speaking poetry to me
unintentionally
in pidgin Pashto.
I'm sure you've blown skulls
wide open with half formed words
and you frightened me
with your fearless fire.

You chased away the trouble that had
settled heavy over my shoulders and down into
every hair and pore and breath like desert dust.

You were different.
Your eyes shone with the promise
of golden gates
and red bridges to white sheets
across blue gaps and hotels and museums and forests full of God
and everything
and everything seemed possible.

I did not think you would leave me.

And it returns from the mountains, the caves,
Wherever it comes from. Whatever you call it.
Trouble. Taliban. Heartbreak. In pidgin Pashto
or any language.

I wondered where you'd gone
but then I realised -
You think you're home,
But both our homes
are static lines floating
through space and we can't
make it home without finishing
what was started, I know
a part of your head is still here, speaking volumes
without a dictionary
in smudged-postcard-smiling-faces
and you know I am still here
trying to translate why you came in the first place.