Hush
At least it was quiet
that night, my parents’
perpetual fighting
on hold until morning,
the fan in my bedroom
barely stirring the heavy
air. Sweat pooled
on my upper lip, trickled
down my back. You came
to my window
quietly calling out
to me, hoping I would sneak
outside with you, like we had planned,
but I was afraid. I remember the long
walks we took almost every
day that summer,
past the row houses,
up and down the steep hills,
and through the housing project.
We meshed because I was a quiet
weakling and you were a loudmouthed
fighter. Your mother always sat
at the kitchen window with a coffee cup
full of beer. She fooled most people,
but you to me
the truth. Walking was
our purification. Our way
to numb ourselves,
our second chance.
#poem #poetry #secondchance
Iris Blossoms
They razed a Project
in our neighbor-
hood, and the ghosts
awakened, moaning and crying,
dark circles under their eyes, tattered
clothes, the same ones they had worn
before. In life they had done nothing
wrong, but they had done nothing
right. Seeds were never
sown. Purple iris bulbs blossomed
every Spring in the back-
yard where we played, where the cinder
blocks and metal grate served
as a barbecue grill, and the hedges
mimicked a maze that no one
could navigate. There was the ghost
of a car on its side at the base
of a bridge, and another—smoke-filled—
windows shut tight, the graveyard
where your broken eyes
wept, and the tears flowed into a wide
river. I’ve lived a ghost-
filled life, strewn with iris
petals, but after a while
the irises refused
to blossom.
