sjsprWriting

Here is the repeated image of a home destroyed.

Crossed out.

Clumsy hands clutching at prison bars. Crossed out. There is something

underneath your skin.

Crossed out. And here is the flag

reconstructed.

Here is the voice you lost that you never meant to lose, but lost

anyway.

Inside your head you hear

a phone ringing, and when you open your eyes you’re washing up

in a stranger’s bathroom,

standing by the window in a yellow towel, hours away

from the scariest thing you know.

In the living room, in the broken yard,

in the back of the car as the lights go by. In the airport

bathroom’s gurgle and flush, bathed in a pharmacy of

unnatural light.

And then the airplane, the window seat over the wing with a view

of the wing and a little foil bag of peanuts.

I arrived in the island and you met me there,

smiling in a way

that made me frightened. Down the alley, around the park,

up the stairs of the building

to the little room with broken cigarettes, all your things.

I looked out the window and said

This doesn’t look that much different from home,

because it didn’t,

but then I noticed the black sky and all those sounds.

You go to class the next day pretending nothing happened.

Your new peers ask

if everything’s okay and you tell them

you’re just tired. Long flight.

And you’re trying to smile. And they’re trying to smile.

And you’re trying not to think about

the phone call. And the prison.

And the ocean between each bar.