Ten-year-old Aniyah and her little brother Noah find themselves living in foster care after the sudden disappearance of their mom, but with her life in disarray, Aniyah knows just one thing for sure--her mom is not gone forever.

"My disease is as rare as it is famous. Basically, I'm allergic to the world. I don't leave my house, have not left my house in seventeen years. The only people I ever see are my mom and my nurse, Carla. But then one day, a moving truck arrives next door. I look out my window, and I see him. He's tall, lean and wearing all black -- black T-shirt, black jeans, black sneakers, and a black knit cap that covers his hair completely. He catches me looking...

The author was a Japanese Christian pacifist, reformer, and labour activist. He grew up in the slums of Kobe, Japan and would later return there to do missionary work. His poems describes aspects of slum society.

"A sequence of short, startling poems of imagined translations"--