And just how memory can spring unprompted, 
reminding you again how little control you have 
over how you’ve changed, the laughter was mine 
emerging from his throat; ringing down Riwayat 
where I’d stopped to eat before reaching Gulmit. 
I had carried a defeated thing in me, that tensed 
my brows and unevened my breathing at his 
rampant joy, a flight and thirteen hour bus ride 
away from home to abandon on some secluded 
trail, shove down Ondra Poeygah, or, harder still, 
to sit and bundle mountain sage and lavender.
Like a mulberry tree watching you crush countless 
mulberries into fresh red stains atop those faded 
in its shade, when I looked towards him he was 
looking back. For a moment our eyes locked, 
he stopped laughing and crushed the watching 
in me. What did this eight-year-old boy, nestled 
between his family, see between earrings, under 
long hair, and behind eyeliner to look so afraid? 
A version of himself, and if so, would he erase
it or would it be a recurring question? Accidental 
sincerity, a knowledge two strangers share before 
they won’t know one another, is warm; his mother 
rubbed his shoulder, drew him to the magnified 
reality of their table. As if it’d be as simple as irritation 
loosening into care, forgiving the thing that slips out 
of anything you name it. Amorphous. A flame:
 the same one burning all your air 
reminding you to breathe.