"MEETING GRANDFATHER"
by Khalil Somadi

My grandfather died the day i was born, and I've missed him ever since
in the way that you miss heat up against
your skin
when all you can feel within
is the cold.

My mom told me about him when I was ten years old.

His name was Sam.
I was told that I am
"the spitting image of him".

Tall, dark and grim!

And that even tho you didn't see either of us smile on the outside much,
you knew we were smiling inside,
in that place where we hide
our secret treasures safe from any human touch...
I missed my grandfather so much!

And that's peculiar,
since we never met.
And since I didn't even get
to see his face
because my mother's only picture of him sadly got misplaced
that time we were evicted,
when our lives became afflicted
by our drought.

Important things we went without.

Like someone to talk to because we were too afraid to talk to one another.
Instead we clung to our need to smother
inner cries
with ugly and unspoken lies
we were forced to act on just the same.

So I made up a friend and I gave him a name.
I named him Sam.
He was just like I am...
born in the wrong Time,
in the harshest place
where it felt like a crime
to show your real face
if it was different--
we were ignorant
as to why.
Because as boys we were so different, we could fly!
Sam and I...
escaping ghetto sounds infiltrating our block
where peace was mocked,
and we created entire towns
from verbs and nouns,
where adjectives did vivid painting
while our adverbs kept complaining
it was useless work
as long as shadows from the real world lurk
like dark storm clouds blocking the horizon.
But we needed our own Zion.

So we worked in the storm cloud's shadow,
and we borrowed
my grandfather from the Other Side to come back and reside
as my friend Sam,
who is just as I am...
born in the wrong Time and the harshest place.
My grandfather, whom I faintly remember
passing one September
on my journey into the world when he was on his journey out of it...
My soul is reminiscent
of who the man he once was.
And our peculiar bond I've come to know as love...