A pair of legs
Highly functional arms and hands
Compatible genetic code programming
Identical navigational map
Footprints impressed on crowded crossroads

Anatomy works the same
I am a member of this collective
What affects this place affects me
Yet I never truly fit in
Never will

I would have to regress to
A different womb altogether
To even stand a chance
Why am I here?
Where I am so easily identifiable

Am I to blame?
For being so easily seduced
By progress and arousing visuals?
Things so underdeveloped back in the homeland
For my selective and overtly ambitious mind

I am hopeless at translating the verbal
But the corporal is second nature
Evident in their fleeting glances
Even more so in their longing for one
"You are tolerated but not integrated."

"You are but our spectacle
To alleviate sore eyes from routine."
Made myself a willing outlier
I hear friendly chatter,
Enthusiastic adverts on screens

Larger than life,
Camaraderie and memories
In the making,
I wish I could be a part of that
But I don't have the meanings of their words

Downloaded and installed
On my hard drive
I walk purposely
As if my feet have crossed these routes
Incessantly

Nothing new under the sun
But I am beautifully and humorously lost
It will continue to be so for a while
Until I work the mustard seed of courage
To ask a benevolent soul

To help clear the path
But who is a benevolent soul under these
Circumstances?
Paranoia aside
It feels like a publicly shared secret

That I do not know the way
If I confirm the assumption
Will I err and choose a Samaritan
Who will abuse my inexperience
To get me into some trouble?

Will my story become the next
Running joke in after-work get-togethers?
Or will compassion be personified
Come to me unsummoned?

Myself, a walking cautionary tale
To download foreign dialects
To your mainframe
Before exploring new worlds

#travelstory # traveler
© Elsbeth Mareile G.C.