Sonnets

Context — Cross-cultural understanding + social awkwardness.

26.
“Hello, my friend!” our heroine called when
the bells to end their class began to ring.
“Are you from China? Near Tiananmen?
I hear these days we’ve migrants from Peking.”
Abu was startled thrice. The first word, “friend”
had not been said to him since he arrived,
and now to hear so leisurely intend
relationship struck him as quite contrived.
A second startle struck when question mark
was used in Stella’s sentence said to him,
as once from plane his family disembarked
he hadn’t once been asked his thought or whim.
The final startle was, at core she meant
Abu appeared to come from Orient!