May 2, 2008
Soldier’s Return
I come home.
On the balcony, laundry hangs on the line,
Fried sardines and cabbage sizzle in the kitchen.
My niece, Nina, almost three,
Asks if she can pee on the dog.
“No, dirty girl, go play with your toys.”
My mother strokes my broken body
With the same sand-colored hands
That spent a lifetime cutting dresses.
written 2004
May 2, 2008
Outside of the Spot on the sidewalk
an elderly woman struggles
to steady her fingers long enough
to line a quarter up with the slot.
All she wants the Buffalo News.
I drink my fancy coffee and highlight:
“reasonable person under
these circumstances.”
A few pages later I look up
and out the window she’s still there.
Fat raindrops
soaking her strips of white hair
while eyes on the ground
she searches for a lost quarter.
I’d help her out,
but I don’t have a quarter.
She looks so long I figure
she doesn’t have another.
Her tattered clothes tell me
she doesn’t have another.
I go back to the books
to learn about justice and logic.
I’d help her out,
but people might stare.
The letters on the page
blur and fade when
in the corner of my eye
she won’t leave the machine
that’s wallowed what must be
the highlight of her day.
I’d help her out,
but she doesn’t need my pity.
She reads the front page
beneath rain streaked glass
and still tries to find her quarter.
And I can’t not look.
I break a ten,
and go stand by her in the cold rain.
We talk about the missing coin
she looks surprised I noticed.
Quick glance, no quarter.
“I saw you standing here for a while,
can I give you another one?”
She smiles and thanks me.
But I want to thank her
as I learned more this afternoon
looking out the window of a coffeeshop
than in three years of law school.
May 2, 2008
echo
can you sum up
all the lost moments
trying to help
but instead
destroying the thread
of what it meant to be us?
it’s my throat tightening,
it’s your voice fading,
it’s the echos reverberating
in the hollowness
of my chest
as i ask you to walk away
that make me say,
how can you leave
when your scent
is a fresh tattoo
etched into my skin?
written 3.13.05
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