An Outcast’s Tears--By Shelly Blankman--United States

An Outcast’s Tears

Her children play knee-deep

in a stream’s spitting dares

to skip stones, their lives

measured in laughter and abandon;

stones that don’t skip,

and one that finally does.

Their mother stands alone,

her burnt gold burka, beaded

with pearls that glisten in the

midday sun like tiny roses

dipped in dew. I join her in

silence, not certain what to say.

My daughter cries every day, she

whispers; her friends want her

to go back where she belongs.

I felt incredibly white just then.

A little girl knows is what she is told.

She doesn’t know her home is here.

Shelly Blankman and her husband, Jon, are empty-nesters who live in Columbia, Maryland with their 4 cat rescues. They have two sons Richard, 31, of New York, and Joshua, 30, of San Antonio. Shelly's first love has always been poetry. Her poetry has been published by Ekphrastic: writing and art on art and writing as well as Visual Verse, Silver Birch Press, and Verse-Virtual.