A Tale of Two Cities, One Is Always on the News.

(Left)

Last year, I saw the world.

I walked streets I had never known and met people I never knew existed.

I laughed in places I couldn’t pronounce and was loved by people who didn’t know what I was missing.

I stayed in borrowed rooms, in borrowed time.

I learned how to live elsewhere.

But I didn’t learn how to stop missing home.

This is a poem I wrote when my flight back to Jerusalem was canceled for the third time.

The suitcase was open at the foot of the bed.

The clothes were folded the way I always fold them.

I didn’t go.

Not because of the weather. Not because of strikes.

I didn’t go because of a missile. Because of war.

War is spoken of like weather.

People nod. They don’t know what to say.

(Right)

Much of me is still in Jerusalem.

I say “home” as if it waits.

But it doesn’t wait.

It shifts. It burns.

It disappears, then it comes back in the news.

Here in New Haven, I walk to class.

I sit with my classmates.

I feel lucky—

Lucky to be studying, to be part of this place.

But my tale of two cities is heavy.

Always too heavy towards home.