I want to be a tourist
© Kapka Kassabova
from Geography for the Lost

I imagine my life as a city 
somewhere in the third world, or the second.
And I want to be a tourist 
in the city of my life.

I want to stroll in shorts and baseball hat,
with laminated maps and dangling cameras. 
I want to find things for the first time. 
Look, they were put there just for me!

I want a room with musty curtains.
I want a view of rubbish dumps and urchins. 
I want food poisoning, the dust of traffic 
in the mouth, the thrill of others’ misery. 

Let me be a tourist in the city of my life.
Give me overpriced coffee in the square, 
let me visit briefly the mausoleum of the past 
and photograph its mummy, 

give me the open sewers, the stunted dreams,
the jubilation of ruins, the lepers, the dogs,
give me signs in a funny language that I never 
have to learn. Then take my money and let me go.