Where the world began and ended
Nokyoung Xayasane

There were these branches that reached up into the sky,
arms uplifted into the sun that I would climb.

There was that ease of a summer day,
the hot breath of the wind, a heat and a blanket on the grass.

I was there, walking along the asphalt underbelly of the bridge,
the train above me on some journey somewhere far from here.

I wondered where it was going, I wondered if one day
I would know its destination.

The sidewalk came up and met my sandalled feet,
and even then I dreamed and even then I did not know to want.

I was a blink of someone’s eye, I was a laugh ringing out,
I was the running of hands along a chain link fence.

It was there where I learned to ask unanswerable questions,
and to ache for tastes and fragrances and sounds,

for things and places that I did not know had names.
It was there where I learned where the world began and where the world ended.