Ndugu wangu

I shouldn't have been welling up as I drove home this evening.

I shouldn't have taken my frustrations out on the wrong target in the wrong place.

A 12 year-old shouldn't spray deodorant on one specific spot on his arm until it burns his skin.

I shouldn't find him in bed, emptying the remaining contents of that deodorant into his nose.

He shouldn't have to listen to everything he says in his perfect English repeated back to him in shoddy impressions of his accent.

He shouldn't be called a thieving nigger.

He shouldn't have to talk about his deceased mother in the present tense because he thinks we don't know.

He shouldn't have to stand, propped up by a water fountain and unable to smile, and lie when I ask him how his day was, unable to hug him.

He should have something a little more familiar than my faltering questions in Swahili, and my blank looks when he moves past glib answers, desperate to tell me things he doesn't want the other boys to understand.

He shouldn't be in a boarding school, faux-friendly and freezing, 6000 miles from his father.