They stand against the glass, eyes the color of cinnamon, curry, chocolate.

Dusty, grimy, a decade’s hand-me-downs of bright pattern that cries

of hungry mouths, of hungry bellies rotund not with satiety, mimic fecundicity.

Tiny hands outstretched, eyes pleading, we need, we want, we desire.

In the mottled, fruit-ripe lush-dark heat of a tiny town in Mexico.

And in the market, the cries of vendors echoing to and fro,

teasing me of my pale flesh unprotected, though friendly, and painless,

their eyes speak the same song that calls to me, sings to me of pain

and a story that could tell a thousand souls the same old line, never twice.

We need, we want. We desire. We need, we need, we need you, your self,

in the jungle depths of Africa, the dense of a monsoon pressing at you.

Here, your shoulders weighted with the baskets of want, mistaken for need.

Your children crowding your ankles, tears at their eyes, hunger plain, evident.

We need, we want, we desire.