The first thing I notice
in the grey, early light
is that I’ve bloodied my sheets again.
Forty-seven minutes later
I find myself standing on my corner
hugging my sides
as the cold strips me of warmth,
my thin jacket providing little protection
from the eyes that penetrate me
when I nervously survey
the seats congested with bodies,
driver tapping the wheel
impatiently as if that white-haired bird
has a lot to do in the long life ahead of her.
A spider probes around my side of the window
and I’m staring up
at that magnificent grey slab
unforgiving of contrition,
ignorant of affliction.
Four years and we never succeeded,
unrequited labor culminates no amends
and you never even seemed to try
to stop these wounds from reopening,
all you did was cut new ones.
When we were school kids
we made a promise
of white picket fences
and two-car garages,
but fabricated plans crumpled
like a house of cards because we both knew
I was the expendable one.
But one day I will tell my children
about the way the sky contorts
just before it plummets,
how the sun awakes every morning
despite my transgressions,
how the picture I carved into a tree
as a boy still remains today.
And that’s why
I wash my sheets
every morning.