You ask me why. I tell you that

[matsunosuperfan]

You ask me why. I tell you that

today I saw a man around
my own age, from Afghanistan, fleeing through
the orphan desert to Iran. He found himself
caught short on water, felt the rain

of too much light against his head and knew
with any luck, he should be dead
by sundown. “Forgive me, mother—”
patchwork scarf ballooned a tent

around his head to block the glare, he gave his last
words to the sand’s miasma:
“and if he can, let my brother pay
my debts, or if he cannot, humbly I ask

my friends—forgive them, for God’s sake.” I will never
scrape across the desert for a second chance,
will never know what makes a man
spend his last breaths begging,

except to notice every time
I cross the street, that something in me
wants to stop midstream and wait
for rain to find me falling.