Visiting Day

 
I catch your smile
through the commotion
of that common room
and I can see
my whole childhood in it.
 
Once, when our world was
just a stickball game
between the manhole
covers on Bristol Street,
you told me
there would be 
time enough
for all things-
a tenderness to the phrase
so unlike you 
and the life you’ve led
that I have carried it
as a counterweight, of sorts,
to all your worldly transgressions.
 
Today, it’s just the two of us—
as gangly and awkward
as the children we once were,
in a room filled
with the sound and smell
of misery, on a scale
I might never have imagined.
I have that too,
to thank you for.
You laugh and make light
of your actuality,
as the light fades
through the grim
barred windows,
on this, the last day
of an August
that has been
as hot as hell.
 
Forums: 

Reviews

No reviews yet.