Away

The food is spicy.
It sits nicely in the stomach,
Warming a body already
Wet with sweat.
Sweet, hot, and lonely.
Thirty-six vendors under
A canvas awning
And not one of them can
Make me any taste of home.
Twenty-two million
Unfamiliar faces,
Trees I can’t name,
Waterways going from
Places I don’t know to
Places I don’t know.
The smell of curry evokes London
Of all places
Reminding me that even when I get home
That too is only where I live.