A house fell on our old block on a night my mother and I sat outside sipping sangria,
using our fingers to pick out apple slices. Not just a house,
but the one I loved once, and fled, and find it oddly fitting in our family history to have it
end up in the hands of a white-trash amateur demolitionist.
Our new block compressed and unimpressive, but nonetheless ours and away from
false idols and pictures of futures not meant to be. Here are new hours.
Hours, the very same, feared and fawned over, painful to trudge through, desired to
facilitate the fulfillment of dreams.
I grasp slow. The difference between your way and me cracking your face,
tearing away sight and all your plans for the week.
Being accustomed to the failure of plans, I choose none, and then choose to fret over
the lack thereof. Energy fit to spin the Earth, wasted.
Even a fragment of paper stuffed in a cookie
knows how much I intend to get out of this place.
Sitting, never away long enough, the familiar branding all the way up
and straight through me. Heard many times by many ears, and I stay here.
Long for words that speak in aftermath and succession, to hear triumphant
and content, able to breathe and move a new way forward.
Hear old voices speak: Dazzling, how you fled.
