My Strangers

At five, a young nurse 

standing in the hospital corridor, held me

like an orphan, in her arms

and laughing, told her boyfriend as he walked off

I was her little girl.



At fifteen, outside the anthropology museum

       in Mexico City

a boy in a school uniform

approached our group and spoke to me

asking where I was from.

The others teased me about it later.



A young man on the plane listened intently,

      his head bent over his book,

as I tended to my four year old daughter.

We didn’t speak, but he helped me

pull a little blanket around her shoulders.

© Colleen Pellatt