Half-way around the world is right where I am

I like to lay in bed with my Cleveland Browns sheets
pulled up beneath my nose. After the light in the hall goes away,
I fix my sagging eyes on a crease that goes across my ceiling,
and imagine kids I’ll never meet. I think about what the phrase
“Half way around the world,” means, because to a kid in Poland
or Botswana, I’m half way around the world.

They probably have names I can’t pronounce. Their walls
might be a simple color or maybe they don’t have walls.
Some kids might go to bed hungry, a few undercooked lentils
and the heel of loaf of old bread swim around in their stomach.
Kids with ghosts for parents, kids who see
a sky filled with black and clouds shaped
like the unhinged jaws of a devil.

We hear different sounds. Some kids have never heard the blades
of a helicopter cut the air in half or train tracks bow
under the weight of a boxcar carrying cattle to be killed
behind barn doors and I’ve never heard a wild animal die.
I bet their friends like playing soccer
barefoot during the fall, so wet leaves stick to their feet,
and they drink glass bottles of cola because the glass
makes it taste better. A girl might fall asleep
to the sound of a fish tank filter humming. And
a Portuguese boy lets his cat rest on his chest
and they both rise and sink at the same time. Ones
heart doesn’t beat louder than the other.

I’d like to dream about us spending a day together.
We could pitch a canvas tent
in the vacant lot behind my house. From the sidewalk
you can smell a can of tomato soup cooking on a hot plate.
A boy from the Ukraine would sing
songs about his past while everyone else pokes
their heads out the fold in the tent
and feel the breeze blow against our faces,
filling a green windsock up with nothing.