From down the hall

Your sister in a camp in Turkey,
Sixteen, deserving of everything:
Let her be my daughter, who has
Curled her neat hands into fists,
Insisting nothing is fair and I
Have never loved her. Naomi,
Lips set in a scowl, young heart
Ransacking its cell. Let me lend
Her passion to your sister, and
Love her for her living rage, her
Need for more, and now, and all.
Let me leap from sleep if her voice
Sounds out, afraid, from down the hall.

—From “Refuge” in Wade in the Water by Tracy K. Smith

Photo: From a Syrian refugee camp in Turkey, April 2015, Ariel Rubin/UNDP, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0