How Do We Call This Home

After all of that After cardamom and crushed tomatoes We drew like children on your kitchen tile You taught me how to paint your skin Yellow, blue, alizarin Sometimes I'd make you crack a smile After years of that When they flew you back across the mountains You just a painter helping Yankee soldiers With fourteen vaccines in your arms So your home would do no harm I still see them in your shoulders Do you call this home A city with no seasons Do you call this home As my country for no reason Clutches yours with endless wars How do you call this home After hearing that This place unfolded into something sweeter Deserts blossomed into words of Rumi An inconvenient place to be Between Russia and the sea You told to me the history I can't call this home A city with no seasons I can't call it home As my country for no reason Clutches yours with endless wars How do you call this home A city with no seasons I can't call it home As my country for no reason Clutches yours with senseless wars How we call this home All those years An empty place to me All those columns I never had to read Lay me down My belly to my feet Your red rug felt like home I want a place like home