You, in Kosovo

When you leave for Pristina

I have visions of the Sharr Mountains,

their orange grasses shivering

against your legs and fingertips,

but the fields are green in your pictures

and you never get that far south.

There, you meet Altin, whose Allah

sounds so much like your God,

and you walk through monastery ruins,

relics from the war like all the pictures

of people still missing

lined up on the fences.

There, you open all the windows

in your parents' rented home

hoping for a dusty breeze, something

to lift this heavy summer,

and since you cannot call you write

to me, Here, a boy becomes a man

at fifteen when he gets his first gun, and there,

you at nineteen, still learning how

to reconcile your voice

with the consonants of Albanian,

to speak across the water

to the woman you love. There is so much

darkness, not meaning just the blackouts

or the bombed-out buildings,

but something in your own

American hands.