I say goodnight, smile, walk out the door then sit on the hill
above, & facing my father’s house, smoke another
spliff & watch his, then my mother’s, windows go dim.
I believe that maybe in the streetlight which flickers & reflects
off the stop sign, at the plateaued road between us,
a flutter, a baseball card in a wheel, will conjure a former self
to slip from my old window, to walk here & sit with me awhile,
with his shoulder to my shoulder
as he takes a few drags, sighs then says, I’m going back home.
I wouldn’t say things gets better. I’d say, We learn to live,
that, human beings can get used to anything.
But he already knows this somewhere, though he’ll have to
throw bottles off rooftops, piss himself & sleep in the snow,
wake to his corruptible body & shame,
withdraw, close one hand around his father’s throat
like a nail you’d hang a mirror on, as the right hand hammers
the Sheetrock & his mother tries to calm him,
crying, blaming herself & holding her palms to her son’s cheeks
as he steps back, wipes his eyes until the Sheetrock damps
against his veins. He’ll have to walk
alone for years to thaw the ash & numb.
from Bicycle in A Ransacked City: An ElegyFind more by Andrés Cerpa at the library
Copyright © 2019 Andrés Cerpa
Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, LLC on behalf of Alice James Books.