The sun always sounding close in your ear

such small consolations as appear in error

or misaddressed to a you no longer a you

you can recollect.

Still, wonder is fresh and often abrupt

as terror—the poison of open places

your open heart.

The nagging of old injury wearing

like outrage considered from afar.

You cannot remember their names

staring at their scuffed shoes unexpected

such disdain, such casual cruelty.

There was not an hour without it

or the echo of the way it frayed and

stumped deciphering, how you were suddenly

not one of them, how they made you

a refugee no matter where you were.