white washed

I noticed her
staring anxiously
from a second floor window
of the embassy
her slender arms
wrapped tightly around her own body
in the comforting pose
of the solitary
but her dark eyes desperate
beneath her beautiful
hijab.

a suspended transient
in a frozen land
of blinding ceiling lights
and plastic plants
in cold office corners
which only confirm
her displacement
in an antiseptic world
washed in white
and her growing nostalgia
for an almost forgotten
heat.

she knows well
the slow unravelling
the string that is pulled
from the center of the chest
until nothing is left
but the groundlessness of being.