Dear leasing office, dear oil slick
2 Minutes Read Time
I did not come to curse this plot of earth,
brickwork bounce-house stricken
with resting bitch face,
or its Pandora’s box of kid-feet, continually thundering
back and forth on the fourth floor.
Dear long-emptied birdfeeder,
ghost, and broken screen, this season’s token cliffhanger
requires I pack my things and disperse
into a cold front of engine rips
and oh-shit brake wails, to let the asphalt eat my tires off
mile by mile. Where will I live, now,
with my heart made of shingles,
my faulty memory, and minivan, trunk stuffed with shoes,
as I flounder toward home like a tune
pitched above my hearing?
Dear weather vane, white pine, dear quick-fix drywall
heavy with questions,
in memory of complete strangers
knocking after midnight to inquire after a Wi-Fi password,
or a light, or the whereabouts of a missing spouse,
I have come
to give this king-size calendar I spilled my days against
one last blessing before I go.
Let vines reach their fingers
across your every fence, ascending the utility poles and power cables,
let the neighbors’ wind chime
irritate the complex into dissonance.
Let the commons reek of garlic and burned spatula, and the AC units
stop, drop, or roll, midsummer.
May the parking-space vigilante
continue etching fuk u on the doors of visitors’ cars
to fracture the mask of calm
swallowing their dubbed suburban yards,
and the phone grinding off and on against your shared wall
always expose as myth the notion
I have ever been alone.
Read more from Issue 18.1.
